On the Wings of Demons
by JMK758
Summary: Abby Sciuto and Sammy Sky have been murdered, shot down in a vile assassination plot. Now, a furious manhunt, a conspiracy beyond reason, burning hatred fuels a quest for revenge.
1. Death Strike

This is my twenty-seventh NCIS Mystery and the seventh of my Third Season. The list of stories got so extensive I moved it, with summaries, to my profile.  
>There are also numerous stand-alone and spin-off stories listed in my profile.<br>The usual legal disclaimers apply. NCIS is owned by Belisarius Productions and I don't own anyone except Rev. Siobhan (Sha-vonn) McGee, SSAs Rosa Arnell, Melanie Kelman, Fred Higgins and other original Agents.  
>Please Review.<br>Rating: T or NCis-17.

On the Wings of Demons  
>by JMK758<br>Chapter One  
>Death Strike<p>

Tim McGee hovers on the edge of blissful sleep, barely aware of being touched, that something gently tickles him out of sleep. He gets his eyes open with considerable difficulty, but it becomes easier when the sensations in his body sort out and he appreciates it's his wife who's touching him, her warm supple body moving sinually against his.

'Okay,' he mentally tells his writer persona which awakens faster than he does, 'so sinually isn't a word - it's her word and what would you call it?' He's glad for the silence as he reaches for his loving wife and they cuddle close, what she'd begun enthusiastically continued. His hand traces down her bare back and further, doesn't encounter anything but her warm body...

A portion of his mind reminds him she wasn't naked before, that after their 'fantasy encounter' she'd dressed for bed in her blue nightgown. He tells that portion of his mind to go away.

"_Mmmmmm_," Siobhan kisses his neck and the sensuous lick of the tip of her tongue wakes him down to his toes. "Happy First Lunarversary," she whispers, her body molding to his, doing wonderful things. She continues kissing his throat and–

His cell phone blares at him from the night table.

x

Siobhan's warm tongue on his neck is replaced be an equally warm but far less pleasant sigh. She falls out of his arms back onto the bed. "It _can__'__t _be."

Vastly annoyed at the interruption that, as a Federal Agent, he dare not ignore, Tim turns away and fumbles for the button at the base of the lamp beside the cell phone. When the light blasts out he squints at the clock: 4:53. He's not supposed to be up for another half-hour, and not the way Shav was getting him. Who could possibly call so...?

Squinting at the name displayed on the ringing phone's outer screen destroys any prospect of returning to the pleasure of celebrating the first month of their marriage. He'd rather look at the lovely red-haired woman beside him, it's a very hard, unpleasant decision but he must open the phone. "Yes, boss?"

x

He's astounded when Siobhan pulls the small device from his hand and lays back down, brings it to her own ear.

"Jethro, you have disturbed the sanctity of the marriage bed. Kindly go awa–" Wide eyed, she sits up suddenly, the blanket flies from her body and Tim's appalled astonishment changes to distress as he watches the color fall from her face. "Oh God," she whispers and passes the phone back to him, "Abby Sciuto and Sammy Sky have been shot on L Street. They're _dead_."

**ooo**

At 0417 Abby and Sammy walk the dark L Street, Sammy particularly basking in the glow of the full moon blessing the night. Abby glances down to the petite woman; Sammy's long pale blonde hair seems to dance about her white blouse and bounces with her jaunty steps. She'd been skipping before but she'd pulled ahead and Abby had made her stop.

"You are one heck of a trip, girl," she tells her impish friend. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you."

"_Enjoy _me," Sammy exclaims jubilantly, her arms flung wide, reminding Abby of a female Peter Pan. She'd swear Sammy's voice dances almost as much as her feet as she walks Cloud Nine. "I'm treating you to a world Goth never prepared you for."

"Nothing's prepared me for tonight."

"I am _so _broadening your horizons."

"Can't argue with that." If not for her eclectic roommate, Abby's sure she'd never have spent the whole night in a Gay – sorry, an LGBT Club – nor that she'd've had so good a time. It was so different from the usual clubs she parties at, even beyond the fact that tonight the women approached her while the men ignored her. But she fit in so well it didn't feel strange, though at one point, upon seeing a particularly luscious guy, she'd gotten confused.

Sammy's gift to her, the rectangular metal pin on her white Victorian blouse lapel, 'STRAIGHT' on one line, 'but not narrow' below it, saved an awkward moment or two. Rather, the people she met were generally much more open-minded than she'd expected, and her straight - pardon the pun - out stand had made her quite popular indeed.

Abby made more new friends tonight than she can recall doing on any other, even beyond Sammy's introductions of her friends and acquaintances. She'd gone to 'Sodom and Gomorrah' anticipating a period of discomfort and adjustment and it hadn't happened. In fact, she was very disappointed when 0400 finally came and the club had to shut down.

x

"If my horizons were any broader," Abby quips, stifling a laugh, "Gibbs would have a conniption."

Sammy laughs delightedly - Abby would've thought 'gay-ly' but doesn't want to press the pun. "He is _so _going to consider me a horrible influence on you."

"I was supposed to be the bad influence on _you_."

"Give me ti _OW_!"

"What's up?" Abby turns to where Sammy's halted, her hand covering her left eye.

"Red light flashed in my eye, nearly blinded me." She looks down. "Hey, what?"

Abby follows Sammy's pointing finger to the slightly moving dot of red light upon her right breast.

"_SAMMY_!" Abby grabs her arm, yanks hard but hears a muffled cough from behind her. Red blood erupts from her friend's chest.

x

The impact drives Sammy back, out of Abby's grasp. Pain and astonishment fill her face. Abby's too horrified to scream.

A muffled '_chock_'. Red blood gushes from Sammy's chest. Another gush erupts beside it, then another covers her left breast, staggers her backward.

Blood explodes from Sammy's stomach, doubles the petite woman over. Her long pale blonde hair flies to curtain her face. Red erupts from the center of her skull - knocks her off her feet - she crashes to the cement.

x

Abby whirls. Car twenty feet away - no cover. '_Pock_'! A hammer slams into her left breast. She looks down, another hammer hurts the middle of her chest. Two red splotches spread.

Two more hammer blows hit fast, stagger Abby back, form a horrific triangle. Red spreads wide as her heart gushes.

She looks up, pain so bad she can't feel her heart stop. The red light from the car window flashes up across her eyes.

The bullet slams into her forehead. Her head snaps back. The red splash–

**ooo**

In the gloomy pre-dawn Leroy Jethro Gibbs' blue Charger rockets through Washington and up L Street. He ignores vehicles and laws with equal ire; anyone who doesn't get out of his way will regret it. Seeing dozens of multicolored lights flashing in the distance, he blasts toward them and stomps on his brake at the last instant. The locked tires screech the last hundred feet as he fights the car to a stop a quarter inch behind the last MPDC unit. He leaps from the car, is yards ahead before he hears the slam and woe to the idiot who doesn't jump out of his way.

He skids to a halt inches from Metro Homicide Detective Jeffrey Carpenter, pounding heart barely catching up to him. He looks about the yellow tape cordoned Crime Scene for the two white sheets. _There __aren__'__t __any_.

"_WHERE __ARE __THEY_?"

Carpenter points, not toward an ME truck - NCIS' or Metro's, he doesn't see either - but to an ambulance whose banks of flashing lights seem to disguise the vehicle as a Christmas ornament. The back door stands open and two women _wearing _white blankets sit on the open deck.

The world flips upside down for Gibbs for the second time in fourteen minutes and he feels his out-of-control aging slow to a normal pace. He turns back on Carpenter, ready to cast him as Rod Serling.

"They're not dead," his old friend tells him.

"I CAN SEE THEY'RE NOT DEAD."

He doesn't waste breath in asking 'what happened?' as he crosses the open space to the blinking ambulance. He'll get it from his late living friend.

Once again no one is stupid enough to get in his way.

x

Abby and Samantha, having undoubtedly heard his shout, watch as he approaches. Abby's forehead is stained with a livid red splotch, Samantha's hair is matted by a burst of red on the crown of her head.

"_What __happened_?"

Samantha winces more sharply than Abby and he suspects it's more from the shrieking tires that punctuate his demand. He glances left to the outskirts of the cordoned zone to see DiNozzo running toward them and raises his hand high to slow the charge.

"_Please_, Agent Gibbs," Samantha appeals, palms to her temples. "Besides being _shot __to __death_ I've got a motherfu–" Abby elbows her through the white blanket. "Getaboudit headache."

"What happened?" Gibbs, who hates repeating anything, demands for the third time. Relief that his friend who'd been reported shot to death - a head will roll over that - being alive doesn't counter the emotional chaos that'd torn through him in the past few minutes.

Abby opens the blanket to display an antique blouse, Victorian if he's any judge. Her left breast is stained red but a larger splotch covers the middle of her chest.

It's evident that much of the red that stains her forehead has been cleaned as well as it might be - not very.

Samantha opens her own blanket; bright red stains her white blouse, five shots as well as the one that colors the crown of her head. He can read the centers of impact from the density of the splashes. There are two shots, one almost dead center of each breast - perhaps her lungs were the targets - two others directly before her heart. A last one marks her stomach.

x

"How do you feel?" Tony asks. Horrible as the supposed wounds are, there's no apparent penetration – thank God – so he feels justified in asking the question.

"It freaking _hurts_, Tony," Abby's normal good spirits are obliterated by having been murdered. "I'm – _we__'__re _– gonna be bruised for a month."

"Beats the alternative," Gibbs declares before another screech of overtaxed tires jangle their nerves. The men glance to the end of the queue of sector cars, recognize Ziva's car and Gibbs looks pointedly to DiNozzo.

He pulls out his cell phone. "'Slow 'em down.' Right, boss."


	2. Why Were We Shot?

Chapter Two  
>Why Were We Shot?<p>

An hour later Gibbs strides into Autopsy and the glass and metal doors quickly get out of his way. DiNozzo accompanies him but stays a half-step behind as though afraid of being run over.

For the first time in several years, since the cyanide gas attack in Abby's lab, there are two bodies upon the first silver table and neither is dead.

Abby is again one of those bodies, she and Samantha Sky sit upon the table bookended by Doctors Mallard and Palmer, who this time use their skills to aid the living. The young women are contrasts, yet their similarities are chilling; black-tressed and pale blonde, tall and petite even when seated, the similarity is in the dark blue NCIS jumpsuits they wear because their clothing is covered in 'blood'.

Sammy's coveralls are rolled high at cuffs and hems and uncharacteristic somberness makes her appear even smaller, particularly when sandwiched between Abby and the lanky Palmer. Being assassinated in a hail of gunfire will dampen anyone's spirits, Gibbs supposes. The pale blonde top of her head is stained by a red blotch that hasn't washed out in the shower.

Abby's forehead is stained, though not as severely on skin as in hair, yet a red line trails from the middle of her forehead toward her left temple. It was in this direction that the 'blood' flowed toward the cement sidewalk of L Street after she'd been murdered.

x

"How are you?" Gibbs asks both women, not choosing favorites.

"This wasn't the way I'd hoped to get back down here, even if I _was_just here," Sammy admits, her normal buoyancy nowhere to be found even as she glances back to the lighted sign mounted over Ducky's desk, her gift to him in happier hours. 'This is where death rejoices to teach the living', the black on white lighted sign proclaims in ancient Latin. She turns back to him, not feeling very rejoiceful. "I just wanna know why someone fake-shot me to death."

"Like I said, 'beats the alternative'," Gibbs reminds her.

She nods. "I guess if it took this to see Ducky again - you too Jimmy," he nods, having no illusions, "it's not all bad." But her smile is a wan, forced shadow of the usual. "But it freaping _hurts_."

"It's great to be alive, Gibbs," Abby interjects, cutting off Sammy's buildup, "but those were all kill shots." She puts her hand to her chest, grateful he can't see her stained body. Neither woman mentions, none of the men will venture, that their skin under their blouses is certainly stained where the color bled through. "I've got one heck of a bruise on my breast and an almost perfect triangle between them." She sees DiNozzo's hand approach and slaps it away.

"Just trying to lighten the mood, boss."

Gibbs lightens it, and loosens the more than hour-old knot in his stomach, with a slap to the back of Tony's head.

"Thank you, boss."

x

"How are they, Duck?" At least Mallard will give him an intelligible answer, even if it's a long one.

"Aside from minor bruising–"

"_Minor_?" Sammy interjects, affronted. She'd been hit dead center in each breast in addition to shots in her sternum and abdomen and doesn't know _how _she'll clean the huge splotches from her hair short of dying it. The whatever it was stained her breasts et al, not that anyone other than Ducky and Abby, whose already seen her in the shower, will ever know.

"They're fine," Ducky concludes, sympathizing with the young women but the bruises _are _minor. "No breakage of the skin, no broken bones, no blood loss; I wish more gunshot victims could be so fortunate."

"What can you tell us?" Gibbs asks Abby, cutting off either woman's objection to Ducky's assessment.

"Laser sight, muffled reports - maybe a silencer - and before you ask no I have no idea what kind of car. I was too busy watching my best friend get shot to death, then dying myself."

Sammy shakes her head but takes Abby's hand. She has nothing to add.

"Big question is," Tony says, "why aren't you dead?"

Sammy glares up at the towering agent. "Agent DiNozzo, you just blew your last chance to _ever _get lucky."

"They're not dead," Gibbs declares, "because this wasn't an assassination. It was a message."

"If it's that they can get to me anywhere," Abby declares, "already knew it. Mikel Mawher taught me that too well." She'll never miss the late madman; his death in her own office had been so richly deserved.

"From now on, you don't leave the Yard without a bodyguard."

She sighs, shoulders slumping down hard. "_Again_."

x

"You're being awfully quiet," Tony observes to Ducky. Aside from answering direct questions, the usually loquacious man has been quite reserved. Only the Autopsy Gremlin's said less.

"Usually, Anthony, I endeavor to pass along answers from my patients, but in this case they're doing quite well in expressing themselves. I _can _repeat that none of the wounds, painful though they undoubtedly were, were actually life threatening. We took x-rays; it was the impacts to their heads and then their heads striking the concrete that rendered them unconscious. The impacts were considerably more powerful than from your standard weekend-enthusiast paintball gun, even though not life threatening, as I'd said. I had Doctor Palmer here draw blood from each of them, in case there were any deleterious and unforeseen effects from what was, essentially, a weekend warrior attack."

"Ex_squeeze_ me," Sammy cuts in, "I just wanna know why we were _shot_."

"Working on it," Gibbs assures her.

x

"Well, I've sat here long enough," Abby declares, hopping off the table. "I'm going to my lab. I have my own blood to check - and Sammy's - and a crapload more evidence to process so just stay out of my lab until I send for you."

The command raises eyebrows; normally one must restrain Abby from being with her friends.

"Not me," Sammy counters. "I'm not _moving_ out of this room. If I'm going to die, I'm not having some anonymous ME take the slugs out. My HMO says I can choose my own Coroner." No one chooses to pick up on this hyperbole.

"_Wait_!" Abby exclaims, whirling on her friend so suddenly Sammy rears back on the table. "What if – this time – I _wasn__'__t_the target? After all, Mikel's dead," she hops about to Gibbs, "but Sammy was the one the guy shot first; he only hit me after she stopped moving. Maybe this time _I_ was just a loose end to be tied off."

"Yeah, _right_," Sammy scoffs, but then looks at the five pair of eyes that surround her. None of them look as doubtful as she feels. "What? Who'd assassinate me?" She looks to her roommate. "_You__'__re _the Super Secret Agent Science Guru, I'm an up-and-coming MD and future ME and I play the violin – _Fifth _violin – in an _orchestra_. Not even the Sixth Violin would gain anything by bumping me off."

Gibbs agrees. Not even John Langley and Colette Zang, who'd murdered Marine Staff Sergeant Wendy Langley and Karen Huston and set up Sky as the 'fall girl' in their failed scheme, could touch her; they're locked away awaiting trial. Nor would their case benefit from killing Sky even by proxy; she's already provided her deposition and she was peripheral to the case. He's more inclined to think that shooting her was 'removing the witness' and Abby was the target. Of a non-killing? Yet Abby's the one whose efforts have led to hundreds of perps being put away. Nevertheless: "You still have a bodyguard."

Sky grins. "Can I pick which body guards me?"

Irrepressible to the end. "No."

She sighs, evidently realizing she's pushed to the end of her very short range. "Fine. Just make him or her a music lover, I'm still practicing Shostakovich's Second Symphony for next week."

x

Gibbs leads DiNozzo and Sciuto from the room, leaving the three MEs to their sterile, white domain. "Do you still have my scrubs?" Sammy asks Ducky, her tone hopeful. "Might as well make myself useful."

"I believe we do," the venerable man says and steps around the table, intending to collect the sets of small garments from the store room, from the rear of a shelf where he'd placed them after the Palmers had returned from their honeymoon. He'd done so in anticipation of the possible return of his apprentice, though he'd never imagined she'd be thrown here in such a circumstance as this.

Nevertheless, he decides that work is perhaps the best way for his patient to ground herself after so outrageous a morning. "And we do have a patient awaiting your services, Miss Sky," he concludes as he approaches the door.

Sammy moves to get down from the table, Jimmy steadies her with a hand on her arm. She thanks him when she gets down and an instant later he grabs her when her knees buckle, catches her before she falls to the floor.

"Are you all right?" Jimmy asks as Ducky hurries back, not having reached the store room. Jimmy holds her by her ribs but that grip isn't enough; she's trembling so violently that he must back her against the table lest she fall.

She looks from one tall man to the other; Ducky's got five inches on her while Jimmy towers over her and neither fact had ever had an effect upon her – until now. She can't stop trembling and her shuddering breath steals her voice.

"_Someone __tried __to __kill __me_."

xx

Gibbs and DiNozzo step off the elevator on three - Abby had very determinedly walked away from them on the first half-lower level when the car had risen only one story and neither man had tried to intrude.

Both know that set of shoulders, that determined gait; if Abby wants either of them - or anyone else - she'll call.

Until then, stay out of her _bleeping_lab.

x

"What have we got?" Gibbs demands as he strides into the bullpen, knowing none of the three agents will be stupid enough to answer with silence.

DiNozzo takes his place - silently.

"Traffic Cam from the intersection didn't get much," McGee reports immediately. "The car was about midway up the block, a hundred and twelve feet. I can clean it up, but it'll take time."

"Let's see what we've got." Gibbs turns expectantly to the wide plasma screen mounted between McGee's and DiNozzo's desks and a few moments later it comes alight.

But not by much. At nearly oh-four-twenty the sun doesn't lighten the horizon, even if such a thing were visible for the downward angled L Street camera. On the right side of the screen, distinguished more by familiarity than clarity of image, they can make out two figures descending from the top of the screen, a block away from the corner camera, and the women's bodies are barely an inch tall.

In the shadowy street blonde Sammy is visible more for wearing a white blouse and blue shorts in the balmy mid-April night while dark-tressed Abby is in white Victorian blouse over long black skirt. Her blouse forms a band perhaps twenty pixels high. Gibbs knows their soon-to-be-assailant's car license plate, even if visible in the inadequately lit street, will be less than half that height.

Sammy's white image nearly bounces in her joyous gait. The girl has been described once in his hearing as 'Peter Pan on Ecstasy', though she needs no artificial boost to her spirits.

As the women walk, at one point Sammy's arms flung wide in some expressive point, they reach roughly midway up the dim block and Sammy stops suddenly, her hand covering her left eye. A moment later her hand, virtually indistinguishable in this dim and distant image, goes to her own chest.

Abby suddenly grabs her arm and yanks but Sammy staggers back out of Abby's grip, a dark stain appears on her chest. She staggers back again – and again – ever receding from the car parked about two and a half lengths from them. Her blouse grows darker and darker, rapidly appearing black stains tell a horrible story.

Abby appears frozen in place, by her posture she's horrified as her friend is 'murdered' before her eyes. The dark spots on Sammy's blouse appear just as horrific in dim and distant black and white. Sky doubles over, evidently the impact to her stomach, her long hair flies forward and then another dark splotch appears at the top of her head and she's knocked backward off her feet, slams to the cement and lays motionless.

Abby turns and a dark stain appears on her antique white blouse, then another and another and another and even for the agents, knowing that their friend is safe in her lab and pursuing evidence with a passion, it's difficult to watch. Gibbs is actually grateful for the lack of clarity.

Abby staggers back under the impacts and then another stain appears on her forehead. Her head jerks back, she falls fast, her head hits the cement and she doesn't move.

The dark car leaves the curb and moves toward the top of the screen. "Freeze that."

x

He steps closer, closer, and is completely unsurprised by what he sees.

The car's rear license plate is black.

"I'd say black masking tape," Tony determines. There's a very dim sheen upon the rectangle.

Gibbs turns to his Computer Wizard. "Can you get an image?"

"It'll take time," McGee says, his gaze locked on his own monitor as he types quickly. "I'll have to go over it frame by frame, manipulate it as best I can and look for the correct angles to pick up the ridges and valleys of the letters using different light wavelengths."

Looking at the image, Gibbs wants to demand answers now. But four in the morning, over half a block away and using city installed and maintained equipment, he won't waste his breath. This time he'll let his people work their miracles while he searches for his own answers.

x

"Whoever it was waited for them," Ziva declares, taking control of the footage displayed on the plasma from McGee's system. Pressing a few keys, she starts the film rolling in reverse, a reverse time stamp appears in the lower right corner. The car rapidly shoots back to its place, Abby and Sammy quickly 'undie' and back out of the top of the screen and then the car sits there - and sits there - and sits there. Cars flash backward down the screen, pedestrians rush in each direction as the night envelops all and the timer on the lower right rushes backward. Finally the car backs away from the curb and out of the scene - at 2:09. "Sat for over two hours," she concludes

Gibbs doesn't bother berating her for stating the obvious. "DiNozzo, track that car, forward, backward, every damn camera in the city. _Find__it_." He has orders for the others, and makes sure his voice carries back as he heads for the stairs.

"Er, boss?" Tim ventures as Gibbs finishes and makes the first turn on the flight up toward the fourth floor and the MTAC balcony. Gibbs halts only long enough to glance back. "How are Abby and Sammy?"

"They're scared as hell," he takes in all four of his field agents, "and depending on _us_to find this bastard."

xx

Gibbs doesn't pause in the outer fourth floor office, doesn't do more than glance at Cynthia Sumner before reaching for the knob to Director Jennifer Shepherd's door. The woman watches him but has long ago given up trying to slow him.

To Sumner, there's no point in stressing, the man will never change. To Gibbs, the woman has finally learned her job.

"Come in, Jethro," Director Jennifer Shepherd says, not turning from the window behind her desk. She'd come in as soon as she'd heard of the shooting, had been monumentally relieved, followed by volcanically angry, to learn the attack had been faked. She could, of course, express this outrage openly, but she's learned much in the year since the end of the La Grenouille disaster. Now she channels such feelings into determination to get the truth - and the bad guys.

Her new regimen also includes numerous consultations with the Agency's Chaplain. Only Cynthia is privy to the fact that their private conferences involve more than the stated purpose of reviewing Agents' status.

"Perp waited for two hours before attacking Abby and Sky," Gibbs announces.

Shepherd has never known him to ease into any conversation; the word 'preamble' simply isn't in his vocabulary. "Do you know how he knew?"

"Club they went to is on L, walking distance to Abby's apartment. They didn't take her car."

"What kind of club is this?" Knowing Abby, the more eclectic the better.

"It's a Gay club."

x

Even for Abby this is extreme. "What was she doing at a G–?" But then she recalls Samantha Sky's bisexual preferences. It'd slipped her mind over the months since the girl had worked for Ducky last year. "Could this've been a Hate Crime?"

"Hate Crimes usually involve beat-downs and bullets, not ambushes with paint guns." He isn't ready to discount the possibility, but the long ambush makes it unlikely.

"Paint guns?"

"The only casualties were their clothes and a couple of bruises. It was mostly getting hit in the head, falling and whacking their heads on the sidewalk that put them out. People who called Metro, and the first officers on the scene, saw two women covered in red and called in the hit. One of the LEOs recognized Abby, which is why we got, and rolled on, the initial call before Metro even realized they were alive."

"Shoddy procedure."

Gibbs just gives her a 'can't be helped' shrug. Neither of them had liked being awakened to get the initial Emergency Alert through Dispatch that their Forensic Scientist – and an 'unidentified' woman – had been found shot to death on a Washington street.

x

"DiNozzo's searching traffic cam records; he'll find the car. McGee's cleaning up the shooting footage, Palmer's following up the Hate Crime angle, but my gut says no. Ziva's looking into anyone who may have been gunning for Abby, but like with the hunt last year that covers 90 percent of the perps NCIS ever put away."

"What about Sky?"

He shrugs, she knows the answer as well as he does. "The three we had while she was working with Ducky; one's in the stockade, one's in the loony bin–"

"Loony bin?" It's hard to restrain a smile.

"And the third's dead. The two who framed her for double murder are locked up, trial's in two months and unless someone _really_wants to be Fifth Violin in Washington Renaissance, she's a dead end."

Shepherd knows Jethro won't drop the matter completely, however. "You think whoever did this will up the stakes next time." She won't bother to make it a question.

"I'm putting Susan Bourne and Tina Larsen on Protection Detail. When they leave the Navy Yard Abby and Sky don't go to the Head without backup."

But Shepherd shakes her head. She doesn't consider that depth of coverage to be necessary but "I want Janet Levy and Lisa DuBois as well; tell Lamb to see to it."

He'd had the same thought himself.

"Sky was first; two to the heart, one to each lung, one to the gut and one top of the head when she bent over. Abby took four to the chest; one got her in the breast, triple tap to the heart, then one to the forehead. Shooter was twenty feet away and light was crap. Car's plate was covered, McGee's working to bring it out."

x

"Any idea of the message?"

"The obvious is too damned obvious."

"Agreed. Any of us could be hit, and even if I issue a reminder to vary routines - and I will - that's not the message. How are Abby and Sammy taking this?"

"Abby's scared and pissed, Sky's scared silly but tried to pretend. Abby's in her lab and will stay there until she breaks this; Ducky'll keep Sky too busy to think about it. Fred Higgins and his team have that Private from Echo Company, Lim Takabachi, found floating in his pool. Do Ducky good to sit back and direct while the kids get dirty."


	3. James 2: 15 16

Chapter Three  
>James 2: 15-16<p>

Abby keeps her music louder than usual, overwhelming all thought other than Science. When she must focus exclusively on Forensics she protects herself from extraneous thoughts and will _not _think about having been shot to death. She and Sammy had been walking, just walking home, completely innocent, just walking home after a fun night with, for her, some new friends when some bastard–

Hand on her right shoulder – screech so loud it drowns the music – turn and swing – _hard _– retreating body ducking – coming upright half a dozen feet away – Mother McGee, her red hair flying from the speed of her duck and return.

Grab the remote from the table, silence the music, let her rage fill the room instead. "Damn, Siobhan, you can't _say _anything?"

"I did. Four times."

Mild tones to her fury, fury reined back and stabled. "Oh. Sorry."

x

"I wanted to come see if there was anything I could do," the priest explains, stepping closer now that it's safe.

"_Other _than give me a heart attack?" Seeing the effect of the slap in the priest's emerald eyes, she raises her hands. "I'm sorry, that was really, _really_ bitchy."

"It's okay. I understand."

Abby looks at the woman, particularly her abdomen. Under the scarlet blouse that clashes violently with her mint green skirt - random clothes she supposes Siobhan'd thrown on while running to where she and Sammy had been murdered - she thinks the priest's not showing a bit, not bad for nearly three months. According to Tony, Siobhan got _pregnant _when Tim had sheltered her in January after Charlie Morley had brutalized her.

'Must do some _great _exercises,' Abby thinks half-enviously, barely able to believe she'd swung at a priest and a mother-to-be, even if Siobhan _did _get pregnant two months _before_ McGee married her – something the man's really going to answer for the next time she gets him alone.

For the moment Abby's not sure which of them she's madder at, Siobhan or that opportunistic bastard McGee - 'and she took his _name_?' - who took advantage of a devastated woman he was supposed to be helping.

Yep, definitely Tim.

Siobhan's the innocent one ... and she _did _come down here to help. Both McGees had probably charged to the scene at Gibbs-speed until Tony had called the rush off. Looking at the priest's mismatched outfit, Abby concludes they'd probably dressed in the dark.

'What did Tim grab, or do I really want to know?'

x

"Abby?"

"Yes?"

"Why are you staring at me like you want to rip my throat out?"

"I'm not." She looks for something to do, someplace to put her hands, not wanting to meet the woman's eyes. Siobhan is a stunningly inept liar, but at the moment Abby's sure Jimmy Palmer could see through the best prevarication she could come up with. "Don't mind me, I'm freaked," she says instead, trying to switch off the internal monologue. 'That's what Def Leopard was supposed to do, save me from thinking things like this.'

"What can I do?"

"What Divinely inspired Words of Wisdom could you - or anyone else - say that could help?" She holds up her hands, ashamed. "Okay, a little leftover bitchy."

x

Unexpectedly Siobhan steps closer and hugs her. Abby holds on, hugging the woman, unable to let go; she doesn't want words, doesn't want anything but for this hug, this divine embrace, not to end. She feels the horror, the pain, the nightmare start to ease. She gradually relaxes from tension greater than she'd imagined suffusing her, but moment by moment the terrible tension eases, drains from her body, relaxation and even her wonted joy replacing it. Siobhan makes no move to end the hug, Abby knows she'll hold her for minutes, hours, a day if that's what's needed until, ultimately, the nightmare has faded and the real Abby Sciuto can come out.

Abby pulls her head back, not letting go yet but so she can see the woman. "Thank you."

Siobhan smiles. "Just employing a little scriptural lesson."

Abby frowns, trying to find a hug like this in what she remembers of the Bible. "Scriptural?"

"James, Chapter 2, verses 15 and 16: 'If a brother or sister is hurting and one of you says to them 'Be comforted' and you do not give them a hug, what does it profit?'"

Abby can't help but laugh. "I don't remember those exact words."

"They're in my version now."

They release one another and Abby feels infinitely better. Then she remembers what she'd learned from Tony and desperately wants to forget it. She can't deal with that now.

x

Siobhan had had her heart in her throat since she'd heard Jethro's announcement early this morning. She and Timmy had grabbed the first clothes they'd touched, she hadn't even looked at them while yanking them on and they'd run to his car. They were three-quarters of the way south from Silver Spring when Anthony's call had flipped the planet over – again. And by the time she had paid attention to her appearance it was far too late.

She wants to shuttle between the women, but Sammy's working in Autopsy and she won't go there while there's a procedure in progress. Not only can't she talk to Sammy there but the 'procedure' is still far beyond her endurance. It's one thing to go there to offer Last Rites to the departed, she _never _wants to see Ducky and James - and Sammy - at work.

Therefore she'll stay with Abby, force herself to stay confined in the far corner of the lab until her friend has something she wants to say. Officially not 'on duty' upstairs, not even here today and unwilling to show herself in the building in this hodgepodge of clothing she'd leapt into, she resigns herself to as much patient silence as she can manage.

She's already called George, dear over-patient George, to give him her 'expect me when you see me' message.

How many times this year has she told her Rector that when an emergency cropped up in this Agency of Emergencies?

x

"Why can't that bastard have shot my skirt?" Abby grouses, holding up the clear plastic Evidence bag containing her white blouse, the material marked with too much red. "I _liked _this blouse. I had to go all the way to the East Village – _New __York_ – for it. Okay, I did it on-line but that's not the point. You know how hard it is to get genuine Victorian vintage clothing in DC?"

"No."

She smiles ruefully, looking to Siobhan for the first time in minutes. "What would you know? Your fashions haven't changed since the Middle Ages."

"There's something to be said for consistency," Siobhan quips. Abby's being curt because she's scared and worse, so she won't take offense at anything the scientist says or how she says it.

"The Church would consider my poodle skirt too much of a novelty."

"As I recall, the Roman church considered it indecently provocative." The garment reaches down to the ankles, is a product of the repressive 50's and is only provocative if one has a 'thing' for dogs. On the other hand, when she and Timmy had been dating this summer, Siobhan had worn miniskirts under her black cassocks, ready for quick changes before setting out after the 6:30 services.

"They wouldn't like my tats either." Abby looks speculatively at the priest. "You ever consider getting any tats? I've seen some that'd look great on you."

"God _forbid_."

"Tim would probably have a conniption."

"Absolutely," she declares with a shudder. There are some nice religious designs, but seeing 'Mom' tattooed on Timmy's right butt cheek, a fairly nice scroll with roses, had put her off the idea of ever marking her body. In fact, she intends to raise the subject of having the thing removed when she's sure of how he'll take to the idea.

x

"Oh, well," Abby says, banter doing little beyond postponing the inevitable. She opens the bag and tries to quell the regret she feels. "Time to see what Major Mass Spec and Captain Gas Chromatograph think of my clothes."

"I've wondered, have you named all your equipment?"

"Pretty much. Bertha's my computer and Ken's my scanning electron microscope." She gives the priest a salacious wink. "He likes to get really close looks."

"Ohhh - _kay_."

Abby lays the blouse upon her table and crosses the room, returns with a silver tray containing a variety of implements, each tool encased in plastic. Breaking the first seal, she uses the small pair of sterile scissors to cut a square centimeter out of the red-stained cloth and places it into a tube which she immediately seals. Then with no less regret and obvious reluctance, she cuts another, larger piece and places that into a Petri dish. Several other samples are prepared and the lot find their way into various machines that surround the room, others going into machines in her office and rear lab. The last sample is placed under the lighted lens of her microscope.

"Will it take long to get the answers?" Siobhan asks from the stool she's placed in the corner.

Abby glances up from the microscope's eyepiece. "You sure you're not married to Gibbs?"

"Pretty sure," she replies, though her smile masks a tiny shudder.

"The gas chromatascope will actually break down the sample into its component atoms and tell me what elements it's made of. The infrared mass spectroscope does essentially the same thing but without the damage." She goes on to describe the details of every other machine's function and the kind of results it could potentially yield until she catches sight of the priest's emerald eyes glazing over.

"The upshot of all these tests," she says with a smile, deciding to have mercy on her friend, "is that I can tell Gibbs what this red stuff is made of, and hopefully figure out where it came from."

"And then you can get it off your face?"

Abby uses the blackened monitor on the freestanding console shelf as an ad hoc mirror. The red stain on her forehead had been lightened but hadn't been removed by scrubbing in the shower. "Darn, I forgot. Well, as soon as I know what this is it'll be gone," she swears. "Sammy's gonna be pissed, though. If this got into her hair shafts with the melanin, she'll probably have to dye it. Wonder how she'd look as a redhead. Bet Gibbs'd like to know."

"No comment," Siobhan promises, touching her fiery locks.

x

Abby examines the rectangular metal pin on her blouse's lapel, 'STRAIGHT' large on the top line, 'but not narrow' small on the bottom. It's smeared with faux blood, though she feels some satisfaction from the fact that stains can't harm the metal. At least something survived the ambush. She removes the pin from the ruined cloth, bags it separately to get a pristine sample of the 'blood' rather than dealing with possible contamination by fibers. The pin is a gift from Sammy and she can't wait for the time when she can clean it off and put it back on.

xxx

In Autopsy Samantha Sky works on the other side of the silver table from Jimmy, her back to the entry doors while Ducky, at the head of the table and that of drowned Marine Private Lim Takabachi, supervises his Deputy and Apprentice. Takabachi's torso has been divided by three incisions, two extending from below mid-shoulders to meet above the sternum, the next halving the body from chest to groin. The ribs have been severed, they and the sternum have been removed 'en bloc' and set aside, allowing access to the internal organs.

"Now have particular care," Ducky directs Samantha, who holds a hypodermic to Takabachi's left lung, "that your point only goes in a sufficient depth to penetrate an avoli sac."

The doors to the elevator slide apart and DiNozzo enters. "Hey, guys, sorry to cut in."

"Very droll, Agent DiNozzo."

"Actually, Ducky, I'm just here to collect Sammy." She turns, apprehension lighting her pale blue eyes. "You have a date with Gibbs."

"A _date_," she cries, aghast, and her hands snap to her head to cover the red splotch that's discolored her long, pale blonde hair. "I can't go on a _date _– I'm a _mess_!" She tries to cover her extra-small scrubs, but her incipient grin hints at her effort to deny the reality of her fears and the chaotic day. "I have nothing to _wear_." She whirls on the tall, grinning man on the other side of the table. "Jimmy, _you _go. He'll never notice the difference."

"Sorry, he's not really my type."

She slumps, defeated. "First I get _shot __to __death_, then I get set up on a blind date."

"Look at it this way," Jimmy advises, enjoying her faux griping, "at least you know he likes redheads."

The grin falls from her face so hard they can virtually hear the crash.

"That's not funny." Her tone is as dead as the corpse between them.

x

"I'm sorry," Jimmy says contritely, taken aback by the sudden reversal.

"I mean I was _shot_," her voice breaks, misery long denied shattering her mask. "Somebody _shot _me to _death_," she cries, trembling violently, "and I have no idea _who _or _why _and I'll _never _get this out of my hair and I'm so _scared _and _miserable _and you stand there treating it like a _joke _you are so _mean_."

She's suddenly aware of Ducky standing beside her and throws her arms about him, sobbing into his chest.

"I – I didn't–" Jimmy stammers. If her spirited manner since returning to the Autopsy suite after months away was an example of her being 'miserable', he'd totally misinterpreted it. "I'm sorry, I–"

Ducky, looking at him over the woman's head, shakes his own, intending to say this is not his fault.

Actually, he's been waiting for this ever since Sammy had arrived. He holds her as she sobs, her body wracked by the violence of her terror and grief.

xx

Gibbs looks at the clock on the distant wall, then confirms the time with his watch. Eighteen, now nineteen minutes since he sent his Senior Field Agent down to collect Sky. 'How long does it take DiNozzo to pick up a woman?'

He shoves the thought away; it's never again going to intrude upon his mind.

Fortunately for the too-long-absent agent, the elevator's bell announces his return. DiNozzo follows the young woman into the bullpen and Gibbs notes she's tightly clutching several crushed tissues, though her reddened eyes are still damp. Her blue scrubs are smeared by blood but the front looks recently wrinkled.

"Hello, Chicky," he greets her, a welcome that instantly brightens her as he knew it would. 'Chicky' is a nickname only he uses for her and it harkens back to their one, true and decisive confrontation, when she had crossed over from inconvenient and temporary pest to a serious medical professional. He likes a woman who demands respect and always gives it to them when it's earned, which is usually by their having the cojones to stand up to him.

Thus far only Palmer and Sky have done it.

When Sky and DiNozzo reach his desk: "Can you think of anyone who wants to kill you?"

She blinks down at him. "Wow, right between the eyes – again. Agent Gibbs, I've been trying. I don't make all that many enemies."

x

This he believes. Her native mirth tends to bring out the same in those she associates with, and even the pair who'd framed her hadn't done it with any enmity; she'd simply been a convenient scapegoat upon whom to hang a double murder.

"The truth is, we're leaning more to Abby being the target. She crosses paths with lowlifes far more frequently than you do, but you _were_targeted first."

"That's really unusual?"

"Yeah." She has to ask?

Sky looks around, as if the clue she seeks is in the faces of the surrounding agents. DiNozzo's returned to his desk, but all five agents stare at her. She gives up, tries to shut the others out. "Agent Gibbs, I swear I have no idea."

"Whoever shot you both waited two hours on that street to do it."

"Then you think it had something to do with Sodom and Gomorrah?"

"Probably not," DiNozzo interjects. Sammy looks back to him, relieved by this opinion. "If it were your club that was the issue, the perp would've opened up there. Most other people from the club we tracked by other traffic cams, they got into cars or used the Metro or went in a dozen different directions. He waited on L Street nine blocks away from the club because that's the path _you __and __Abby_ would take to walk home."

"But like you said, why paint balls and not bullets?"

"_Because __they __weren__'__t __paint __balls_," Abby's extra-loud voice erupts from the plasma screen, fills the bullpen and makes everyone jump.

x

"I wish she wouldn't _do_ that," DiNozzo gripes, snatching the remote control from the screen top while swallowing his heart. This is the second time this week she's done it, and last time he'd nearly fallen from his chair.

He particularly dislikes when the scientist communicates through the supposedly 'off' system, because if she can do that, what else is she capable of? Considering her eclectic bend, he doesn't want to know what her fertile imagination has in store.

When the unit is officially turned on, it shows a downward angle into Abby's lab, from her freestanding computer and microscope workstation to her large white table. She wears her long white lab coat over the NCIS coveralls he'd seen her in last. It makes a jarring image which, considering the usual staggering fashions of the 'Mysterious of the Dark', is saying a lot.

"What do you mean it wasn't paint balls?" Gibbs demands.

"Come down and see, oh Sharpshooter Extraordinaire."

"DiNozzo, David ... Sky, with me," he commands, already out of the Bullpen. McGee turns off the plasma as the three follow the fast moving Gibbs.

"Sure _felt _like paint balls," Sammy mutters sotto vocé as she hurries to keep up with the tall agents before they board the elevator, "and my boobs have the bruises to prove it."


	4. Mustum

Chapter Four  
>Mustum<p>

When Gibbs leads DiNozzo, David and a very quiet, blue scrubs clad Samantha Sky into the Forensics Lab, he notices and immediately ignores Chaplain McGee seated on a stool in the far right corner. It's usually hard to ignore her, the woman is usually quite forward reaching but, when focused upon a case, he can manage it and her atypical appearance helps. Rather than her usual 'uniform' of black spring skirt under light blue Clerical shirt and inch-an-a-quarter-high wraparound stiff white collar, she still wears the poorly matched mint green skirt and scarlet blouse she'd apparently jumped into this morning when the first call about Abby's – and Sammy's – murders had come in. She hasn't continued on to her Church, he knows, probably thinking she can be of some use here. He'd seen her for a second when he entered the bullpen earlier today before she'd wisely headed off in the other direction before he could call upon her husband for information, but since she's out of 'uniform' - very much so - he'll ignore her.

His attention instead is all for the white lab coated and deep blue jump suited woman before him. She's just finished attaching to her left wrist the leather white star bracelet that matches her collar and other star wristband, which themselves form a jarring mismatch with her outfit. Normally what women wear is of such little interest to him he's been known to not see it at all, but when three women surround him and are attired so atypically, he can't help but notice – and immediately not care.

x

"What do you mean it wasn't a paint ball gun?" Gibbs demands as though their conversation hadn't been interrupted.

"Oh, I didn't say it wasn't a paint ball gun, it probably was. I said we weren't hit with paint balls, at least not the ordinary kind."

"Explain."

"Boy, someone took his grouch pill today."

"Happens whenever you die, Abs."

"Awww, that's _sweet_. Thanks, Gibbs." She turns toward her computer, but hops back around. "I think." She again turns to the computer screen, upon which is displayed a line graph composed of measured and labeled spikes. "Actually, what Sammy and I were hit with wasn't paint. I realized that the minute it didn't come out in the showers."

"Tell me about it," Sammy interjects, touches the red stained hair at the top of her head while eyeing the red discoloration that remains on Abby's forehead. There's also a lot that bled through their blouses that these men will _never _see.

Gibbs glares her to silence; she may have been a victim and this may not be Interrogation, but he considers this a variation of Rule 22.

"If not paint, what was it?"

x

Gibbs directs his attention to the output of the monitor screen, repeated and enlarged on her plasma screen mounted upon the wall beyond while Abby reads off the relative percentages of such exotic elements and compounds as 2-naphthalenesulfonic acid, 6-hydroxy-5-((2-methoxy-5-methyl-4-sulfophenyl)azo), disodium salt and disodium 6-hydroxy-5- ((2-methoxy-5- methyl-4-sulfophenyl)azo) -2-naphthalenesulfonate, polyphenols, resteratrol, ponceau, sulfur oxide, hydrogen/oxygen compound, sulfur dioxide, chlorine, methane...

She smiles broadly and not a little smugly and continues to blitz him with the indecipherable combinations until he grips her hand to silence her.

"What does that come out to?"

"Red wine, food coloring, chloroform and water."

"Chloroform?"

"It was a still night last night," she says, her pronouncement confirmed in Sammy's pale blue eyes. "Those food coloring, wine and water balls also raised an invisible cloud of sleepy-bye gas around us. Even without whacking our heads on DC cement, something I'd've gladly passed on thank you very much, we were almost assured to go out, at least for a little while. Our City Works sponsored migraines only clinched it."

"I can see the food coloring," Gibbs says while feeling something about the case is still extra-odd; what isn't? "Make it look like blood, but why the wine?"

"That's where things really start to get hinky."

"Start?"

"It wasn't your common table wine, it's almost pure grape wine, only a _little_fermented but with nothing you'd find if you bought a bottle of juice in the supermarket. I identified it as from Vitis vinifera grapes. The alcohol content was extra-low; they put some–" She catches the hard look in his eyes. "Never mind what they use, it just stops things from 'cooking'. In fact, I ran the percentages and other trace elements, and they were little more than grape juice, only very partially fermented."

"Abby?" Siobhan McGee's voice attracts their attention; she's come up behind Sammy, hands on shoulders in a touch intended to be comforting but at the same time she moves the petite young woman aside. "It's referred to as _ex __genimime __vitis_, or mustum. That's Sacramental wine like we use at Saint Mary the Virgin."

x

Gibbs bites back his automatic interrogative - of course the priest is sure, and she has more to say. "In preparing the wine to be Consecrated, I add a small portion of water."

"About four percent?" Abby asks.

"About. I never measure."

Abby turns to Gibbs. She'd been about to mention the purpose of the virtually non-alcoholic wine, but decides it's better to comes from the priest because she has her own conclusion: "Rule 30?"

"'The more something seems like a coincidence'," Gibbs confirms, "'the less it is'."

x

Siobhan, shaken by this development and glad to be out of the direct conversation where she can keep to her own thoughts and the implications of what the scientist and detectives are saying, becomes aware of Anthony DiNozzo's eyes on her. He doesn't stare but keeps giving her furtive glances, has since he came in when he thinks she doesn't notice; a fact that only makes her notice.

Through the years, the kind of looks that men give her usually come in two categories: if she's dressed for work they usually start at her face, get no lower than her white wraparound collar and then lock on her face, but if she's dressed in 'civilian' clothes those eyes will occasionally flicker to hers but will favor her breasts, hips or legs - or if she turns around to an observer those eyes will look up from her bottom.

This morning neither she nor Timmy had wasted a second to get here. She'd jumped out of bed in the near darkness and into underwear and a badly mismatched mint green skirt and red blouse, dragged a brush through her fiery hair to get most of it pointing in the same direction and run after Timmy. They'd been diverted from arrowing toward L Street to NCIS Headquarters and she'd thought less about her appearance than about Abby and Sammy's dire straits. She and Timmy had only taken a brief break for showers in the downstairs locker rooms before the rest of the agents – and the murder victims – had arrived. However, she keeps no clothes here at NCIS other than her gym clothes and she's not going to wear them. She has more important things - or rather _had _- to concern herself with.

'Who would pretend to kill Abby and Sammy?' and now 'Who would fake Sacramental wine to do it?'

x

She wouldn't even think of her appearance now if not for Anthony's furtive attention.

But he isn't stealing glances at her breasts, her legs _or _her crotch, something she wouldn't slap him for but which wouldn't gain him any favor either. He keeps glancing at her stomach. After the fifth time since he'd arrived she looks down, inspects the red blouse minutely for some unnoticed stain, but she finds none.

When she looks back up he's not looking at her at all.

x

'She's not showing,' Tony thinks. 'Could the dates be wrong? I thought it was three months.' He doesn't feel guilty about the knowledge. If McGoo's so shortsighted to leave his emails where anyone can hack into them then he deserves what he gets.' Ziva had forced the information out of him, he'd told Ducky and Abby... And Tom and Harry and Bill, but now he's not sure if the dates were right. She's pregnant, no possible doubt, but she got knocked up nearly two months before she and McInsert got married, but she's barely showing anything. 'Granted she's in good condition - _very_good - must work out really well to be better than two months without adding an inch. The Probster has a Personal Trainer, do they both–?'

"_DiNozzo_."

"Right here, boss."

"Could've fooled me. Get back upstairs, when I ask you for that car's location you'd better have it. McGee – and McGee, get on this wine, find the winery, identify their customers." His eyes reinforce the message to the priest, 'go with him'. "How obvious is the message?" he asks with nearly exhausted patience. People had better pay attention to their work before the next shots are other than paint balls.

This message, such as it is, is more and more specific to NCIS as a whole and not just to Abby and Samantha, and they'd better ID the shooter before he raises the stakes.

xxx

When he's alone with Abby, Gibbs lowers his voice. He'd prefer to seal the lab, but that might complicate things and embarrass the woman further.

"Abs, I need to see those bruises."

Any other man, saying those words, takes his life into his hands. As it is, she looks at him with vast apprehension. "Gibbs, as a demonstration on a case, you once walked in here and told me to take off my clothes. Is this another one?"

"No."

"Oh."

"I haven't had anyone document your or Sky's bruises, yet." She flinches at the qualifier, the invasion of the Internet Fakers hasn't been long enough ago by any measure. "But I do need to check something."

x

There was a time she'd tease him mercilessly about wanting to see her bare boobs, this time she can't raise the spirit. She slowly pulls down the coveralls zipper, spreads the material barely three inches, wishes she'd've been able to retain her bra save for the painful way it pressed upon her chest.

Between her breasts the dark bruise has spread several inches - and there's no way she'll show him the one on her left breast - but the impact points against her sternum, darkest of all, are three tightly grouped circles in an almost perfect one inch wide equilateral triangle between her breasts.

"Those impacts, according to the film–"

"Film?"

"Traffic cam half a block away." He watches the apprehension drain from her eyes. "McGee's cleaning it up, it shows a span of four seconds. Very precise aim for this grouping."

"_Now_ can I cover up my grouping?"

"Sure." She does it with a sharp snap of the zipper up to her neck. "Quite a marksman."

"Paintball guns are not precision equipment, not the kind weekend warriors use to paint the forest red. And they don't bruise like this _or_ hit as _hard_." She covers her left breast protectively; that impact hadn't been on flesh backed up by bone and the ball had _hurt _when it ruptured.

She doesn't want to embarrass Sammy by revealing to Gibbs that both her breasts, just an inch above each nipple, look like they'd been punched. She doesn't want to, but she does so as discretely as possible. When the time comes, Sammy and she will take each other's pictures, make sure no one can guess the parts of the body displayed.

This, however, leaves Gibbs with one last, aggravating question. "So who's taking pot shots at my Forensic Scientist and Ducky's apprentice ME, and with what?"

"And when do we get to shoot _back_?"

xxx

As Gibbs enters the bullpen, McGee calls to him. He looks over, sees Mrs. McGee straighten from bending over the man's shoulder. Beyond them, Michelle breaks off from a whispered conversation with Jimmy. 'What did I do to deserve two pair in the corner?' he thinks, anxious to be rid of the extras.

"What do you have, McGee? And what're you doing here, Palmer?" The four look at him, a silent, blank faced chorus wondering which one should answer the interrogative first. "Palmer."

For a horrible moment it almost seems he'll have to choose which Palmer but Jimmy answers. "Doctor Mallard has called Sammy back down to Autopsy, unless you need her."

"I'll know where to find her. Goodbye."

"Oh, goodbye," but he says that to his wife. Gibbs doesn't care, just so long as he's gone.

"Palmer, did you–?"

"Yes?" Jimmy, halfway to the elevator, calls back.

Gibbs closes his eyes, counts very slowly to five, and when he opens them even Chaplain McGee has had enough awareness to cross the room to the side opposite her husband's desk, even though it puts her closer to his own. She's not generally as much of a strain upon his nerves, but today almost everything is. "Michelle, hate crimes?"

x

"Only four reported instances of 'Gay Bashing' made it to Metro in the past five months; all involve multiple perps and none of them involve shootings. Mostly it's a gang mentality - or _coward _mentality - situation."

"Put it on the back burner. The weapon was precision caliber, look for custom refitters." She turns to her computer, clears the former search.

"McGee – _Tim _McGee – you clear up that film?"

"About 60 percent done."

"Let's see it."

This time the images that come up on the plasma screen could have been shot in early twilight, and the focus is improved so the men and women can watch the 'murders' of Abby Sciuto and Samantha Sky in appalling detail. It's the car and its unidentified driver, not the assault upon his friends, which holds Gibbs' attention. There are no barrel flashes, so probably no gunpowder launched those projectiles. Many guns, he knows, use compressed air but if this is so then the force applied implies a considerable amount of air. Was the weapon tank fed or did it use extra 'on weapon' fuel?

"Hold." he snaps as the car pulls out from the curb after the grizzly deed, from the passenger side of the vehicle, is done.

He steps close to the screen, can just make out, through the angled window, a left hand upon the steering wheel. He points to the spot. "Blow that up."

The image steadily enlarges but loses clarity with every magnification, until the hand that grips the wheel takes up almost the whole of the screen. "Can't you clean that up?" McGee usually does it as a matter of routine, so Gibbs' having to ask for it is only another prick upon his impatience.

"I'll try," McGee doesn't sound optimistic.

Gibbs doesn't care; from half a block away at four in the morning with city equipment, he's amazed to have gotten as much as he has.

He wants more.

x

He's impressed when the image re-pixilates and he gets more. He gets what appears to be a scar, or at the very least a lighter-than-hand-color irregular line that extends from a point almost between the middle and ring fingers to just beyond the middle of the hand.

There's no ring on that hand, but this is better. "Add that to the BOLO."

"Adding," Michelle announces.

"Good job, Tim. DiNozzo, how goes the trace?"

"Not so well, Boss. There's just not enough working traffic cams. Budgets," he elaborates at Gibbs' hard look. "I keep losing him and have to search adjacent cams. Lost him seven times, found him six."

"I picked up the trail four times," Ziva declares, "but though the car did not follow an evasive course we did lose him several more times due to inefficiently working traffic cams."

Gibbs is in no mood to allow inefficient city equipment to excuse the inefficiency of his team. "Do you have him now?"

"Present status ..." DiNozzo reports, "lost."

"Get down to Abby, see what she can access."

"On it." DiNozzo's out of the bullpen, and the frustrated Gibbs' range, as quickly as he can. He doesn't particularly believe Abby, stressed as she is, could do a better job than he has, but he'll go to get out of Gibbs' cross hairs.

"Ziva, that suspect list."

"Fortunately we have run it twice already, so there was little to do but add the perps arrested since our second encounter with Mikel Mawher, link in the case files from all DC teams, subtract those still in custody or dead and I am left with forty seven names of those in the DC area."

"Narrow it by–"

"This _is_the narrowed list, Gibbs. Who wants to volunteer to help me run it?"

Gibbs glances to McGee and Palmer, both of whom hold strict attention upon their assignments. "DiNozzo."

x

He turns to the red haired woman who stands beyond his desk. "What did _you_find out?"

Siobhan has never had any desire to learn what working for this man is like and feels no inclination to change that stance, though she does have a new depth of respect for what her husband goes through daily and marvels that he can regularly come home with a smile on his lips. "According to what Abby narrowed down," she says with a secret nod to her husband; she certainly wouldn't have known how to call up or interpret the report, "the wine comes from the O-Neh-Da Vintners in the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York. They supply Sacramental Wine to Churches of several denominations through at least the mid-Atlantic region."

"How much of this did you know before you came up here?"

"All of it." She's ordered supplies from the vineyard for nearly two years after having shopped around among various vintners before choosing O-Neh-Da as her favorite.

"All right, what are–?" He decides not to ask what she's doing for Abby and Samantha; there are some types of questions the priest simply will not answer. "See what you can do for Sky."

Siobhan nods, and her parting words to Tim as she passes around Michelle's desk are 'Feicfidh mé roimh i bhfad thú, grá mo chroí'.

Gibbs doesn't even try to guess her meaning. Instead, feeling the need for a change of venue to help focus his thoughts, he goes to his desk, flags all the available information his team has compiled through the shift for access in MTAC and heads for the stairs, gives McGee, David and Palmer the short message "MTAC, call the moment you have anything."

x

When Gibbs is safely ensconced in the secure chamber, Michelle leans closer to Tim. "What did she say?" she whispers.

Tim feels no reason not to tell her; it wasn't _that _private. "'See you later, love of my heart'."

"That's so _sweet_."

To Tim she sounds almost envious. "I'm sure Jimmy has his little endearments."

"Nothing about Jimmy is little," Michelle tells him with a saucy smile.

"Ohhhh–_kay_."

"Walked right into that, did you McGee?" Ziva asks with a smirk.

"Leapt in with both feet." It's not the first time he's regretted being left behind, the only man flanked by the two women.

xx

Tony walks into the Forensics Lab and the first sign that something's wrong is the silence where music had been playing just minutes before. Abby's music, eclectic as it is, is virtually perpetual, occasionally nerve jangling, and an increasing percentage of the time Gibbs' first act when he enters this room is to turn it down or off.

Having left the man in the bullpen less than two minutes before, Tony does only a cursory 'Gibbs-scan', but Abby's alone, looking at a magnified slide under her microscope. However, she generates a field not unlike the energy cloud that surrounded V'ger in Star Trek, the Motion Picture - except hers is more malevolent.

He notes she's removed her white star collar and bracelets and substituted her inch high sharp spikes that encircle throat and wrists with deadly menace.

"What's wrong?" he asks, unable to ease the feeling that he's making a tragic mistake. She spares him only a brief glance before she returns to her microscope.

"_You _are." she snaps.

"I've only just walked in."

"Well, now you can just walk _out_."

x

This halts him for several seconds, but he rallies his affable front and tries again. "Have I walked through some cosmic storm I didn't notice and encountered Mirror-Abby?" But the glare she turns back to him tells him that not only did the joke fall flat but the attempt was a very bad mistake.

"You just had to do it, didn't you?"

Unable to recall being the one to ambush Abby or Sammy this morning - though he's sure that's what drives this misplaced aggression - he decides that "I'm going to go out and come back in."

"Good, _go _out so I can lock the door."

'Okay, humor won't break through this, time to channel Gibbs.' "Okay, Abby, I know you're having a rotten day - getting shot spoils mine every time - but I do not deserve this so knock it off and tell me in Forensic Science-eze what's bugging you."

She comes off the stool, crosses half the distance between them and stops, fists planted on hips and the sharp spikes gleam. "You wanna know what's bugging me? You really wanna know?"

"I really wanna know."

"In addition to getting shot to death by the hinkiest combination of stain-makers I could imagine, after seeing one of my best friends supposedly gunned down right before my eyes, you have a big mouth."

Tony reviews everything he's said to her today, with the possible inclusion of this conversation, and can't think of a single thing that could justify this - at least not from a reasonable person who hasn't had so surreal a morning. Maybe this is just her time for it to all come pouring out and he's become the convenient target.

'Well, if that's true, I can take it.' "What'd I say?"

"You told me the other evening that Siobhan is pregnant."

x

"Well, she is. I got it right off the Probster's emails. But while that's a surprise, a shock even since they did the horizontal 'beast with two backs' over _two __months_ before they got hitched, why does that piss you off?"

"Because, Tony, why come to _me_? I mean, what did you expect me to do about it, invent a two month retroactive 'morning after' pill?"

"No, I..." 'Come to think of it, why _did _I tell her?'

Abby's not about to cool; actually she's just building up steam. "We spent nearly an hour alone together here, Siobhan and I. I guess she figured it would be good for me to talk out getting murdered and all but I couldn't say a word to her. I mean, what was I going to say?"

"You could've talked about little Timmy?" As soon as the words pass his lips he knows they're a tragic mistake.

"I'm not even supposed to _know_, and if not for you I wouldn't. Really, what was I supposed to say to her? Did you want me to give a lecture on morals to a _Priest_?"

"Well, I hope it doesn't come to tha–"

"What did you hope it'd come to, Tony? I mean, why come to me? It's a little late for advice on contraception – for either of them. What do you want me to do about it? Why involve _me_?"

"You had no idea when they got hitched that she had a bun in her oven?"

"_How __could __I_? What'd you think she'd say to me back then? 'Thank you, Abby, for helping to plan this bridal shower, but we do have to hurry before I go into labor?' Yeah, _right_. They're a Priest and a Boy Scout for God's sake–"

"Webelos."

"Who _cares_? No. _No __one _had any idea. But if I'd known in advance they got married because he'd put a bun in her oven I'd've broken off his knob! But it's too late now. December would've been okay, a Christmas birth, they could've timed it so beautifully but I don't want to even _be _here when October hits, people put it together for certain that the baby's not a premee and the firestorm starts."

xxx

Gibbs sits in one of the forward theater chairs in MTAC, looking at a series of photographs. When he'd entered he'd directed the two technicians to put away their cards and call up pictures of every non-incarcerated suspect or perp NCIS has dealt with over the past 5 years. Even with a search limited to those who'd used firearms in the commission of their crimes, it's an oppressively long list.

He'd taken a remote control so he can page through the photos at his own pace, but twenty five minutes at looking at the backs of left hands in the slim hope of a ma–

His blood runs cold for a moment, then heats when he recognizes a face last seen in this room just days ago. On the back of the man's left hand is a very distinctive scar, the picture is from a surveillance camera in Reagan Airport and that face...

His cell phone is out in almost record time, the speed dial too slow to suit him. /Colonel Mann./

"Holly, Jethro, get down here fast."

/What, no 'hello'?/ the Senior Agent of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division quips.

"Hello. Get your ass over here."


	5. Master List

Chapter Five  
>Master List<p>

Lieutenant Colonel Hollis Mann, Senior Investigator for the DC Army Criminal Investigation Division, has received a multitude of rapid deployment orders. Occasionally they come urgently with life in the balance. Occasionally they come officiously, a terse command rather than an urgent directive, usually then from someone in authority over her. However, she cannot remember the last time anyone has ordered her - when he had neither rank nor prerogative - to 'get her ass' anywhere.

For Leroy Jethro Gibbs, her Navy / Marine somewhat personal counterpart - is it still termed 'significant other? - to do so; well, an emergency is about the only circumstance that'll save him from the consequences of this 'order'.

The call had concluded in typical Gibbs manner, he'd hung up on her as soon as the words were out of his mouth, but she'll make no attempt to call him back. Fort McNair is quite close to the Navy Yard, so she takes the call for its implied urgency and hurries to the motor pool to commandeer a vehicle.

If the matter is so urgent that seconds count, she'll learn the details behind the summons when she arrives. If it's not so urgent, well, she's well trained in dealing with difficult adversaries.

xxx

She passes through the Security screen in the lobby less than thirty minutes after receiving Jethro's call and when she arrives in the third floor Operations Division with her escort agent, the tension in the huge room feels like walking into a tremendous wad of smothering cotton.

Director Jennifer Shepherd is with Gibbs' team, the three men and three women attentive to the almost fine print document displayed on the wide plasma screen between DiNozzo and McGee's desks. As Hollis approaches, about to announce her arrival, the image on the screen changes to that of the crowded main lobby of Reagan Airport. People arrive and depart, but one black leather jacketed man stands still facing the line of ticket clerks; he could be going either way. The image allows only limited detail and clarity, but Mann has no trouble recognizing him.

"_Shit_."

The sextet turns but it's Shepherd that tells her that was "A very eloquent expression of very bad news."

"The Iceman is in Washington?"

"You didn't know?" Shepherd challenges.

"I did not. I'd've had the entire Division on alert to pick him up on sight."

"I really doubt that."

x

Hollis nearly steps back from Shepherd's verbal slap but holds her ground against the woman's anger. "Director, I swear to you I know nothing of the Iceman's–"

"The Iceman shot down Abby Sciuto and a former NCIS associate at 4:20 this morning."

This news does drive Mann a step back but Gibbs cuts in. "They're fine; the weapon only fired paint balls."

Shepherd turns on Gibbs and his four field agents wish they could be elsewhere. She knows how useless it is to glare at Gibbs, so Shepherd turns back to Mann, tries to recover her edge. "Regardless of how lethal the weapon was, this picture was taken several days ago and I want to know why Ronald Adolphus is in Washington and why he's shooting my people."

"I'll help in any way I can."

x

Ronald Adolphus, professionally known in the world of Counter-Terrorism and International Intrigue as the 'Iceman', is an assassin, but he's unique for two reasons. His is a 'hit and run' style in that he hits his targets 'en passant', gets close and takes out his victim so nonchalantly his work is rarely perceived for what it is. His target simply dies and he's gone. It's in his sheer ordinariness that the Iceman exhibits his greatest strength.

A second distinction is that he never uses his own weapon. His client provides the weapon to be used in the hit. If identified, the weapon traces back to the client, never to Adolphus.

The Iceman had come to NCIS' attention several months ago when he'd been contracted to kill numerous Scientists using a collection of exotic 'fantasy weapons'. The one who'd commissioned the hits had paid the price for his distinctive collection while Adolphus had escaped.

As a climax to that outrage, it was revealed that the Iceman is on retainer with the U.S. Army, deployed to perform the violent duties the Army would never condone nor participate in - publicly.

The two Army Generals who'd informed them of this had also informed NCIS, in the persons of Shepherd, Gibbs and his team, that they were not present that day, and that the Pentagon would regret it if anything happened to Gibbs and his team should anyone dig too deeply into the Iceman's activities. He is a convenient, unofficial and eminently deniable Army resource.

"The Iceman's employed by the US Army," Shepherd says as though the situation were Hollis' fault and she must clean it up. "He's sent after targets the Army can't legally touch, in circumstances where a military assault would be 'inappropriate', allowing plausible deniability at the highest levels of the US Government. His targets supposedly include unfriendly leaders of friendly governments."

"Eight months ago," DiNozzo takes up the story, "the brother-in-law and third in power to the President of Zimbabwe died rather tragically under very mysterious circumstances. He'd advocated a separation from the US and had been rallying support when he had a little accident."

"Accident?" Mann asks.

"So the government says; they're very tight-lipped about the whole thing but we managed to find a record of one of Adolphus' known aliases had bought a train ticket for a run across the border less than an hour before the body was discovered."

"Well, I can tell you the Army doesn't have it in for Abby or this other person," Hollis declares, appalled at the attack upon a woman she considers a friend and offended that any of them could think otherwise. She's most particularly offended that anyone, most especially Jethro, could think for one moment that she'd be a party to it.

"The only way you could know for sure," Shepherd challenges, "would be if you had inside information about Adolphus' activities."

"I don't, though if I did know anything about Abby I'd _tell _you. But the Iceman's an independent contractor–"

"The Mechanic, Charles Bronson, Jill Ireland, Jan-Michael Vincent, 1972, directed by Michael Winner–"

"_DiNozzo_."

"Sorry, boss, but she's got a point. The Iceman chills 'em for the highest bidder."

"So who's bidding now?" Shepherd demands, holds her glare on Mann who returns fire for fire.

"I swear to you I'll find out."

x

When Shepherd leaves she takes most of the room's tension with her. As the agents return to their respective places, Gibbs and Mann have a brief, quiet moment beside his desk; they're only inches apart for she has no intention of letting anyone hear this exchange. "Well, Jethro, my ass is here, per your 'request'. Did you really think I'd've known anything about gunning down NCIS agents with paint balls _or_bullets and I wouldn't tell you?"

"No."

"How are Abby and...?"

"Samantha Sky, one of Ducky's assistants."

"I wasn't aware he had any beyond Jimmy Palmer."

"Neither was he. But they're fine; shaken but unhurt." He realizes both women would contest that. Let them.

"Agent DiNozzo," Mann's voice rings out as she turns on him.

"Yes, boss. Colonel. Ma'am. Mann."

"What evidence was found at the site that links Ronald Adolphus?"

"Nada, except for a traffic cam record of the car he was driving and his left hand through the window. No ballistic evidence unless you count the ruptured plastic paint balls. Last I left Abby she was trying to raise a fingerprint or other trace evidence, but the surface area is too small and did I mention ruptured?"

"Boss," McGee interrupts urgently, "you're gonna want to see this."

"What is it, McGee?" The only time he doesn't mind interruptions is when there's progress and when he reads McGee's face he knows he won't be angry over this one.

"I've followed the trail of the car from this morning. Since then it's run seven red lights throughout the Northeast quarter, photographed each time, and we have some very clear shots. Best of all, it confirms the partial information I had from the rear license plate."

x

The plate had been covered with black tape, but analysis of the ridges and valleys on the tape had exposed three of the numbers and letters, too few to get an adequate trace but no longer useless, though why the obstruction has been cleared does concern him. Now they have an identification of the plate, and more, but it feels like they're being played. Adolphus wants them to find him.

"Whose car is it?"

"It's registered to Hertz Rent-A-Car on 16th, and you are not going to believe this: it's leased for the week to Ronald Adolphus, the address listed is the Sheraton Hotel on North Capital." He'd expected to be greeted with looks of utter disbelief so he's not disappointed.

"Throw up the spots where he was photographed on the map," Gibbs commands, a syllable ahead of Mann who's doubtlessly anxious to regain her status with the team. "Numbers."

In very short order the map of Washington upon the plasma is highlighted by numbers scattered irregularly throughout its field. "What is he doing?" DiNozzo asks as he studies the irregular pattern, incredulity piling upon incredulity, "driving around playing 'catch me if you can'?"

"We'll catch him, all right." Gibbs reaches for his jacket, a signal for the others to gather their own supplies. "DiNozzo; you, Ziva and Michelle in your car. McGee, Mann, you're with me."

"Always," Hollis Mann assures him. The others pretend not to hear.

xxx

Two cars halt at the curb across the street from the Sheraton Hotel, a pair of white buildings too large and spacious for any of their tastes. Half a dozen potential exits for a casual visitor to take; for an assassin on the run, there have to be twenty escape routes. Gibbs opens his phone, commands a force of twenty Agents to converge upon the building. When they arrive, armed with pictures of their quarry and sufficient weaponry to take him out, he'll establish a perimeter and the six, Mann included, will form the shock team.

That's how things should proceed in such a tactical takedown as this, but they face no ordinary opponent and there are too many odd things about this case. The non-lethal attacks upon Sciuto and Sky, the formulas in the assault projectiles, coupled with the brazenness of Adolphus' Washington tour... Abby would OD on hinkiness.

"Boss, this place has underground parking," DiNozzo points to an almost discreetly recessed ramp which leads below the side of the closer white building.

"Palmer, McGee, get down there and, if you find the car, immobilize it."

"How should we do tha…?" McGee changes his mind about completing the question, turns and crosses the street to complete the assignment instead.

x

Gibbs doesn't leave the parked car, he neither wants to confront their target with a depleted force nor to act without being sure the man is inside and not continuing his trek through Washington. If Adolphus is there, then when the support agents are in position they'll move in.

"Do you often get suspects who make the trail this easy?" Hollis quips.

"Who says this'll be easy?" The six are about to confront and try to trap a professional assassin who has taken down innumerable targets throughout the world and has never been caught. Ziva had confronted him a year ago and emerged from the contest a very poor second. If not for her not being on his hit list she'd be dead, and despite her formidable skills she'd been defeated with appalling ease.

But this situation is especially strange. They've virtually been led to this spot, and while there's a chance they could be the Iceman's targets and are therefore walking into an elaborate trap, Gibbs doesn't believe this is the case.

Therefore he waits, and four minutes later the call comes in. /Boss, the rental car is here, parked just seventy feet in and positioned for a fast getaway./

"He's not going to make one, is he, McGee?"

/Not unless he knows how to make good time with four flats and a missing distributer./

"Good work." He sees the first of the Tactical trucks cross the intersection a hundred feet ahead. "You two meet us in the lobby."

xxx

The brief conversation with the woman at the Sheraton's front desk is a familiar one; she stands up for longer than most but inevitably folds and directs the six Federal Officers to room 758. Within three minutes five black jacketed and one blue uniformed investigator flank the door, key card in Gibbs' left hand, weapons at ready.

None of them are in line with the room but pair off high, medium and kneeling, ready to cover the full range of the inner room. Card in reader, green light, hard shove and weapons come around the corners.

"It's about time you got here," the man seated at the round table beside the window across the room says. "Come in, ladies and gentlemen. Let's get aquainted."

x

Though this greeting is more civil than expected, and preferable to bullets, none of the armed agents trust the casually seated, apparently unarmed man. Though he appears unarmed - and Ziva can testify to the deceptiveness of that - they carefully though visually search the room from the outer hall for booby traps.

"Please," Ronald Adolphus says, his open hands palms up upon his lap, "I've laid no traps for you. I desire nothing but civil conversation. Come in, please."

"I'm _shocked _you expect us to trust you," Ziva says as she centers her aim for the middle of his forehead, a half inch above his eye line.

"Ziva David. Yes, I can appreciate your reticence after our last encounter. However, you are no more my quarry today than you were the last time we met. I only dispatch my formal targets, never 'collateral'."

Last year when Ziva had nearly apprehended this man he'd also appeared unarmed, then two wired electrodes launched from his belt and stunned her with a thousand volts of electricity. It'd dropped her to the sidewalk and now she trusts nothing on or around the man.

"I assure you," Ronald Adolphus says, looking at the six weapons trained upon him, "you have nothing to fear," he glances out the lightly curtained window beside him, "nor have the agents who surround the hotel."

x

Knowing the positions of the agents backing them up, Gibbs concludes this last to be supposition, though a very good supposition.

Given the choice, however, of remaining in the hallway training their weapons into the room and to thus frighten or endanger a potential passerby or else to accept the invitation, they one at a time enter the room, search cautiously for traps, and finally allow the door to close.

The Iceman, cool as his nom de guerre, doesn't move, nor do any of the weapons change their aim.

"All right, Adolphus," Gibbs says, fed up with the oddities of this case, "you wanted us here, why?"

"This may be difficult even for the Army to believe," he says with an almost gracious nod to Mann, "but there are definite limits to even what I will do."

"Meaning?" Mann demands. She's never met him, but the Iceman's clandestine association with the Army offends her.

Adolphus very slowly stands up, never allowing either open hand to slip from sight as he holds them upward, palms to the six. "I've been offered a very lucrative contract, which is why I'm in Washington. Seven targets, a million dollars each, seven million dollars American. But I am a man of means, and I'd like to think of morals, even if they are such as you might neither credit or trust. I've chosen to reject this particular contract, but when I do it will undoubtedly be offered to another."

Gibbs has heard many stories in his career, but incredible as it might be, he sees Adolphus is telling them the truth - at least so far as he believes it. "And you're telling us this because?"

"I have nothing against Islam or converts within the Army, but home-grown nine-elevenists offend me - and I have lines I will not cross."

Adolphus spreads the fingers of both hands slightly, small white objects drop, eyes automatically track their fall to the floor and the sun explodes.

x

Crying out, the agents try too late to shield their blasted eyes. "I'm blind!" DiNozzo exclaims, anticipating a bullet through his brain.

"Ditto." Palmer cries, unable to guess where to point her gun in the chaotic blackness.

"Can't aim." Hollis Mann exclaims, tries to listen over the din for her target's movements.

"Can _anyone _see?" Gibbs demands, already certain from the confusion that their quarry has made his escape. He gets no good news.

It takes nearly thirty seconds for abused optic nerves to begin to recover and almost a full one before the room returns to its normal afternoon brightness.

No one bothers to look for the Iceman.

x

"What the hell was that?" DiNozzo demands as he shoves his Sig back into its holster and longs for an enemy to strangle.

"We'll find out later," Gibbs declares, looks at the six small marble-like spheres scattered on the tight weave carpet but more interested in the six by eight white paper laying in their midst.

Michelle pulls out her cell phone, actually glad she doesn't have the large digital Crime Scene camera, and snaps several pictures before Gibbs, who pulls a set of latex gloves from his jacket pocket, picks up the paper. By this point DiNozzo closes his own phone.

"McRoberts reports Ice didn't breach the perimeter. He's sent half his force to sweep the building."

"Good _luck_," Ziva mutters. No one argues that the assassin might not have made a clean escape. The search will continue, but no one elevates their hopes.

"What is that?" Mann asks Gibbs. He turns the paper toward her, the answer obvious.

"Names and locations."

"A hit list," DiNozzo concludes.

"Ya think?" He examines the paper, tries to get his tongue around most of the twisting names. "Shlomo Amar, Israel; Yona Metzger, Israel; Dimitrios Arhondonis, Istanbul, Turkey; Tenzin Gyatso, Tebet. Katharine Schori, Washington DC - explains why he's here - Rowan Williams, England and Joseph Ratzinger, Italy."

DiNozzo, also gloved, takes the paper, stares intently at the names. "I could swear I know this one from somewhere."

"_Where_?"

"I'm not sure, boss. Gyatso, something about that name–_Hey_."

Ziva's snatched the list from DiNozzo's hand so she can see the names without Gibbs' poor accent. "Oh my God."

"What do you see?"

"Gibbs, Shlomo Amar is the Sephardi Grand Rabbi of Israel. Yona Metzger is the Ashkenazi Grand Rabbi."

Michelle, wide-eyed in mounting horror, remembers where she's heard one of the names as well. "Dimitrios Arhondonis is Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew the First of the Greek Orthodox Church."

"Tenzin Gyatso," DiNozzo recalls now with the help of context, "is the Dalai Lama."

"Katharine Jefferts-Schori," Tim knows these names too well, "is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in America and Rowan Williams is the Archbishop of Canterbury."

"And Joseph Ratzinger," Gibbs says, "is Pope Benedict the Sixteenth."


	6. To Hell with Jurisdiction

Chapter Six  
>To Hell With Jurisdiction<p>

Gibbs slaps his cell phone closed after calling for the MCRT truck and a team of Forensics agents, the latter to scour the Sheraton hotel room in search of any clue to the Iceman's employers. He hopes the assassin met with them here at some time, unlikely though it may be, because otherwise they have few clues about who hired Ronald Adolphus.

Since the Iceman had registered the rental car he drove and checked into the hotel under his real name, Gibbs considers the likelihood of success slim indeed. The assassin will have started being so open after deciding not to take the contract; when he'd started to drop very elaborate clues like the formula loaded into the paint balls which had ultimately lured the investigators to this room.

Therefore, it's probably been days since he'd given his erstwhile employers the bad news. The assassin's position might already be filled.

"All right," Gibbs pulls the attentions of his team from their investigations of the luggage-less room, "we have a Hit List made by home-grown Islamic convert terrorists–"

"who are supposedly Army personnel–" Hollis Mann interjects, vastly annoyed.

"who want to take out Israel's two Grand Rabbis, the Dalai Lama, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, the head of the American Episcopal Church and of the entire Anglican Church _and _the Pope."

"Wish the Iceman had told us who," DiNozzo gripes.

"What, you want him to do all our jobs for us?"

"Would be nice."

Gibbs finds he can't contest this. "These people are scattered all over the world and their security ranges from hardly any to, in the Pope's case, extremely tight."

"Even in his own town?" DiNozzo counters. Are things slightly more lax in the Vatican, or are the fabled Swiss Guard on their toes twenty four seven?

"I'll have Shepherd put everyone on alert, but this goes far beyond the hope that NCIS can handle it. Adolphus may have alerted us, but it'll take FBI, CIA, the whole damned alphabet soup to make a difference."

"In five countries," Ziva reminds them.

"Is it five?" Gibbs sees McGee snatch out his cell phone, he waits but doesn't interrupt.

"Shav, important. Have you heard anything about our Presiding Bishop, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dalai Lama, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, the two top Rabbis in Israel and the Pope getting together anywhere?"

/_Wow_. Not a word, but that'd be _some _coup. What's happening?/

"I..." He sees Gibbs just in time. "Can't say. Talk to you later. Slán agus beannacht Dé leat." He closes the phone, knowing that even with that closing endearment, 'goodbye and God bless', he'll answer later for this abruptness. "No."

Gibbs accepts that the woman has an inside track. If so monumental a gathering were in the works, especially if it were happening here in Washington, perhaps at the National Cathedral, she couldn't fail to hear about it. The planning would take months and it's no exaggeration that it would come to the attention of virtually every Religious long before it hit the public eye.

"All right, these people are one at a time targets," Gibbs decides. "Stands to reason since it's starting in Washington that Schori, at the National Cathedral, would be the first target." He pulls out his cell phone again; first Shepherd, then the alerts will ripple out from NCIS to virtually everyone with a badge.

x

"Why?"

Michelle's question halts Gibbs before he can activate the speed dial. "Why what?"

"Well, I mean, why attack _any _of them? I mean, none of them are really indispensible." She'd expected five outraged glares so they don't faze her. "So far as I know, there are lines of ascension for all of them; there have to be. The Pope dies, the College of Cardinals gets together and - in time - elects a new one. The two Houses of the Episcopal Church may be caught by surprise, but they can meet and elect a new Primate, and until then others will do her job. You won't destroy _any _Religion by killing its head."

"Where were you," DiNozzo asks, "on November 22, 1963, 1230 hours?"

She looks up at him, doesn't bother to consider the question. "My _parents _weren't even dating."

"Sorry, wrong target."

"Standing on a corner half a block from my house," Gibbs says, his eyes haunted as he remembers that stunning day, "holding my mother's hand when one of our neighbors came over and she gave us the news."

"Exactly. Classic question to ask any American over 50: John F. Kennedy wasn't the first President assassinated, he was the fourth, but he's the only one people alive today remember and he was the first where everyone knew about it the same day, maybe the same hour. It literally stunned everybody in the country, impressed the moment into memory vivid half a century later."

"After 9/11," McGee remembers, "churches all over the country were packed for weeks. My old one was doing 3 or 4 masses a day to keep up, and had to move people out each time to make room. Shav's was doing just as many."

"People turned to religion," Ziva sums up, "when four planes took out thousands of people; New York, Pennsylvania and here. People needed the comfort and assurance their faith brings, and they are _still _suffering."

Mann doesn't want to consider the effect if one were to "Smite the Roman, Anglican, Episcopal, Greek, Buddhist and Hebrew Religions within a few days."

xxx

When the agents return to the Navy Yard Hollis Mann remains with them, she'll coordinate CID and NCIS investigations through computer links with her Headquarters. Gibbs and his extended team reach the bullpen at the same moment that Director Jennifer Shepherd approaches from the MTAC staircase.

"Word is getting out to the other Agencies," she tells the six, with a brief nod to Mann to acknowledge CID's participation, "most of whom claim exclusive jurisdiction - and half of them are right."

"We don't even have a timetable," Gibbs is galled to admit. "We have a credible threat, a supposition that Washington will be the first strike zone because this is where Adolphus was contacted - and that's it."

"I've already been told by Justice that NCIS is to lay off this. We're too small and it's way out of our jurisdiction."

Gibbs is inclined to agree until he thinks of Abby and Samantha Sky; NCIS had been brought into this case because they'd been shot with doctored paint balls. He also remembers, with the taste of bile, the last time he'd refused to investigate a case because it was outside NCIS' purview. His inaction, his outright efforts to stop Abby from pursuing the investigation, had cost the life of a Navy Lieutenant.

"To hell with jurisdiction. Other than Army CID, no other Agency is as widespread as we are. We're all over the damned planet."

"You'll never make it stick," Shepherd warns, but likes the sound of his determined maneuvering even if she can't openly support it.

"I don't have to make anything stick, that's your job, Director. All I have to do is have my team - and Mann's men - listen for terrorist chatter from within the US Army, and put together enough clues about where and when the hit will be."

"Nice, concise and as thin as gossamer, but run with it. You find anything credible, you give it to everyone."

"I don't care who stops this, just so it's stopped."

x

Gibbs turns on his team already situated in their places. "DiNozzo, backtrack Adolphus, find out where he went and who he met with. Ziva, you and Mann; who has seven million dollars for these hits? McGee, compile all the chatter of known terrorist cells. Your buddies in Cyber Crime have Carte Blanche. Go."

"Going."

"Palmer, get on to this Jefferts-Schori, I want to know everything about her schedule and plans for the next month. Where's she going and who'll she be with?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'll be with Ducky," he says, turns about and is almost out.

"Sir - I mean Special Age..."

"What is it, Palmer?" He has little time and less patience for waffling.

"I was thinking..."

"Always a good idea. So's getting to the _point_."

"NCIS can establish jurisdiction if our Chaplain were at the Cathedral to see her Primate and she had an escort..." the words die under Gibbs hard glare. "It was just a thought..."

"An escort for a Chaplain. And why would a Chaplain need an escort? She's not the _Director_."

"No, sir." But she takes a deep breath and her tiny voice strengthens. "But she could be there to set up an Agency-wide Service like the Memorial we had when all those agents were murdered last year, and while she's there the escort could photograph the building - in reality look for unsecured areas an assassin would use to..."

Deadly silence stuffs the room until Michelle, breathless and completely humiliated, regrets she opened her mouth.

"Good idea, Palmer. Set it up," Gibbs says as he strides toward the elevator.

xxx

"Duck, I need a psychological autopsy," Gibbs announces before the doors are fully open. Ducky's at his desk at the far end of the room, his two trainees work on their charge at the closest silver table but before the venerable man can reply Sammy Sky turns, actually hops about from where she's assisting Jimmy Palmer.

"_Hi, __Agent __Gibbs_!"

"Chicky," he says as he passes the blue masked young woman - it's still hard not to think the word 'girl' because of her size and zest, though she's a very enthusiastic 24 and he doesn't want to be distracted, particularly by the blood smeared young woman.

"What can we do for you?"

He turns to actually face the over-enthused woman and notices the blood isn't confined to her scrubs and hands but smears her right cheekbone above the edge of her blue mask. "You can clean your face."

"Oh." She turns, snatches up the silver metal top of one of the instrument trays. "Oh."

"_After _you keep these intestines out of the way," Jimmy says testily, his hands deep in a man's abdomen.

"Sorry," she says, not losing her barely hidden grin as she returns to her duties.

"Play nice, children," Gibbs advises, continuing on to the seated man. Sammy is perennially the most joyous person he knows, but there's something unsettling about the way she can approach even an autopsy with a grin.

x

"Yes, Jethro," Ducky says when Gibbs reaches the desk, "I'm just completing the psychological autopsy the director called for."

"Not that one. Another one."

"Another one? On whom?"

"The people of the planet Earth."

"Wow," Sammy cuts in from behind, "you sure do ask for a lot."

Gibbs looks back just long enough to drive the smile - finally - from the blonde woman's face and she meekly returns her attention to the man before her. Then he may return his attention to Ducky.

"Miss Sky is correct," Ducky says, looking up at Gibbs with heavy irony, "you do ask a lot. I shall require a raise."

"Has anyone told you our latest development in the Iceman case?" He almost expects Sammy to break in again but she's sufficiently chastened and keeps her silence.

"No, they have not." Gibbs quickly brings his friend up to date, a summation more unsettling for its conciseness. "Oh dear."

"What sort of effects are we looking at, Duck?"

"Hell on Earth," the whisper comes from behind him. Gibbs won't chastise her this time because she's right.

x

"You are a man of faith, Jethro," Ducky says to hold his friend's attention, "simply magnify your own emotional response by a factor of several billion. There will be shock, grief, disorientation and the loss of those very things that ground one. The extreme response will be short lived, but the recurrence of attacks as one victim after another falls - and God forbid their _successors _come under fire - will have an increasingly disruptive impact upon an unknowable number of people."

He stands up, _needs_to stand. "Now that it occurs to me, I think it's remarkable that no one had concocted the scheme before this. There have been attacks in the past, several of them perpetrated upon the Pope - Popes - in recent years, but the scale of this is chilling. I even find it remarkable that someone might actually contemplate pulling the trigger in this case. Such an individual would, by definition, have to be a cold-hearted person indeed."

"The Iceman turned it down."

"Well, it seems I shall have to revise my estimation of him. I suspect this scheme may well require someone who is psychopathic, sociopathic or both. Religion, the belief in and worship of a Supreme Being - or beings - is one of the most deeply ingrained aspects of the human psyche. Whatever one may believe, the belief in or at least acknowledgement of something more than one's self is basic to the human mind. I might not go so far to say that it is universal, but it is very, very close."

"So we're looking for a psychopath or sociopath."

"Oh, Jethro, it's far too soon to even guess. And I expect your focus is to find the contractor rather than the contractee."

"Get rid of the mastermind, the plot could fall apart. If there's no one to lay out seven million dollars then there're no hits."

Ducky knows his friend isn't that optimistic.

xxx

"Sir," Michelle Palmer calls to him before Gibbs reaches his desk. "You told me to get the Bishop's schedule from her office at the Cathedral."

"Yes, what is it?"

"Yeah, if we can get in front of the woman, maybe we can capture the unknown assassin before he can strike," DiNozzo says.

"Maybe," Gibbs counters, not liking the interruption but he has another objection. "Rule 39."

"'However good the plan is,'" Ziva quotes, "'the first thing someone will do is muck it up'."

"That's my number 8," Michelle declares, trying to regain the floor.

"You swipe all of Gibbs' rules, Probette?"

"Only the good ones, Agent DiNozzo, only the good ones."

Gibbs almost gets sidetracked into asking what she considers a good rule but his question still hangs in the air so, against his rule 41 - Never repeat yourself, make them remember the first time: "What did you get?"

"That's just the point," Michelle declares, grateful to finally get it out, "I couldn't get anything. The Diocesan office doesn't release her schedule. If you want to make an appointment they'll coordinate a schedule for when she's available." Gibbs turns away, disgusted. "But no, sir," he turns back, "when I told them who I am and why I needed it they wouldn't release it over the phone - I don't think they believed me when I told them why but they told me someone had already tried of get that information."

"Who?"

"He'd identified himself as Dave Edwards from ZNN, but that's not the person the office staff normally deals with, that's-" she consults the pad on her desk, "Adam Sandoval and Edwards didn't act like he knew the rules. Normally if someone wants an interview, an appointment is set up, and since the Presiding Bishop's 'area of responsibility' takes in the whole country, most often it's one of her staff that does the interview. But Dave Edwards wanted the Bishop's entire schedule. I understand he was persistent enough to be both annoying and memorable."

"What'd he get?"

"Instructions to have Adam Sandoval call for the appointment, and to teach him how things are done."

'At least Rule 39 doesn't apply today,' Gibbs thinks as he turns to the desk behind him, but "Where's McGee?" He should have been back from setting up things with Cyber Crime by now.

DiNozzo is long ready with the answer. "He's upstairs putting Palmer's master plan into effect."

"Get him back down here. That plan's scrapped."

If Michelle's put out by DiNozzo's 'master plan' jibe or the apparent collapse of her _idea_, she doesn't show it. Instead she reaches for her phone. "I'd better do it before Tim embarrasses himself."

"Then call the Cathedral back and get every scrap of information you can on this 'Dave Edwards'."

"If you can get an appointment," DiNozzo quips.

xx

"Let me get this clearly," Reverend Siobhan McGee says to her husband in her fourth floor office when he finishes outlining the audacious plan. She'd been quite happy when he'd come up for what she'd thought was the end of his shift and for their return trip home, when she'd thought he'd come up to make up for his earlier abruptness, but that happiness quickly fled.

She's stood for many moments, mouth hanging open, unable to believe the words he was actually saying to her. "Someone is going to kill..." She can't say it. It's too appalling, too monstrous. "All seven - that's _madness_."

She tries to push it aside, to force herself to think clearly. She doesn't bother to protest that none of this is consistent with true Islam; for years it hasn't been about what the Qu'ran actually says, but about what fanatics can pervert it into.

"Let me think, _please_. The Presiding Bishop is the only one - except for the Archbishop, of course - they're the only two who don't serve for life - that I know of - I'm not sure about the..." She forcibly throws this line aside, strives for logic, for sense, for what she knows. "Primate Schori has a term of 9 years, it expires in 2015. Archbishop Williams will serve until he's seventy two unless he decides to retire ear–"

"Shav?"

"_What_?"

"It's not about any of them specifically, more about what it'll do to–"

"I _know_," she clutches her temples, trying to keep her head from bursting apart. "Just... give me a minute to get my head around this, will you? I'm still in shock."

x

To Tim this is obvious; her brogue, normally so melodious, is so thick and hard it couldn't be cut with a cement saw. Despite the stresses of the past year, the violent revelations that man's inhumanity can be brutal beyond imagining, this is a whole new dimension of perversion. But she turns back, manages to face him and the problem.

"Okay, you say you and the others, FBI, CIA and so on, are alerting everyone here and all over the world so they'll step up security but you don't want to go in openly into the National Cathedral, like you're sweeping it, and possibly alert anyone that they're being hunted but you're looking for potential weak spots an assassin would use and you want me to get you the entry you need."

"Yes." She did that on one breath?

"That's _Stupid_. Who in God's name came up with that plan?"

x

"Er, Michelle."

"I am going to have such a long talk with that woman. All right, I'll be part of your insane plan but understand this," her emerald eyes harden to match her brogue, "I will _not_walk up to the Presiding Bishop and _lie _to her. If you people want me to arrange a special Service for Enkiss at the Cathedral then that's _exactly _what I will do. I'll get a date and we go ahead _as __planned_, or you count me _out_."

"Fine."

"Done."


	7. The Contractors

Chapter Seven  
>The Contractors<p>

When Gibbs' phone rings at 1600 he's not surprised by the aggravated voice on the other end of the line. /What do you think you're doing?/ Senior FBI Agent Tobias Fornell demands.

"Getting the word out on a credible threat."

/You're raising the Terror Threat Alert is what you're doing. May not be Red, I figure it's gone from Orange to something like burnt umber./

"See, the government does have an imagination. I always thought there weren't enough colors."

/Damn it, Jethro, NCIS has talked the Pentagon into recommending a Worldwide Alert. What do you have to say to that?/

"I'm impressed. I never knew we could swing that load."

/Seven people, Jethro, _seven __people_./

"Not the number, it's who they are." 'And what they represent', he thinks but won't say. "Hit the President, public opinion polls say only 23 percent of the country will be pissed. British Prime Minister, maybe less. Bin Laden, they'll throw a parade. But people like their religious leaders, even if half of them don't even know the names." He won't confess he hadn't recognized most of the names on the list. Right now Abby has that list and she's reading between the lines.

/Have you any idea what this alert is doing?/

"If the threat's real, it'll keep a lot of people happy if someone gets the bastards. If it's not, it's good practice."

He knows Fornell won't be too surprised to find himself talking to dead air, followed eventually by a dial tone.

x

"All right, what've we got?" Gibbs asks his people.

"The Probie's plan, or rather the Probette's," DiNozzo says, "is dead in the water." Neither agent seems to mind the dig or that their plan to work quietly fell apart as soon as word about the threat got out.

"Metro has two score of uniforms in and around the Cathedral," Michelle cuts in, "and no one I've spoken to there is willing to admit over the phone that the Bishop is even _in _the city."

"And I thought you had such an honest voice when you said you were an NCIS agent," Gibbs says, willing to give his own dig now that the local pressure is off. Actually, Michelle'd been handed the runaround and had to prove her bona fides nearly a dozen times with Gibbs, despite the seriousness, secretly growing more amused at each stage. When the link had been lost between the tenth and eleventh hand-off, he'd thought the young woman mad enough to bite the receiver.

"Rule 44 is in play," he decides.

"'First things first'," Michelle quotes, "'hide the women and children', or I guess in this case the targets. You know, I've always thought that rule a little sexist."

"As have I," Ziva declares. "In my experience, it is the men who need saving."

"We've got our own woman and child right here," DiNozzo observes, getting in some target practice at Ziva and Michelle.

"Pray you never need saving, Special Agent DiNozzo," Michelle warns.

"I wouldn't mind being saved," McGee interjects.

"Did it already," Michelle reminds him. "Look what happened." She won't be any more specific, not with the other agents here.

"You're beyond saving, McHapless. You're married."

"You shall have to look elsewhere for salvation," Ziva declares. She still hasn't entirely forgiven him his betrayal, and he can find all he needs with the priest.

"You two ladies can write the next two rules," Gibbs has had enough of the banter while there's still a case before them.

"Who're you calling a lady?" Michelle mutters, but not loudly enough to risk even a proverbial head slap.

"You ever get any work done after 1600?" Hollis Mann quips from the other side of the bullpen's partition behind Gibbs, where she'd been leaning and watching this interplay.

"Not often or a lot," Gibbs admits sourly, "even _before _four."

But his bite is enough to end the banter, which has at least managed to dispel some portion of the tension. Though alerts have gone out to those who bear responsibility for the religious leaders' safety, there are still too many unknowns in this threat: who the main players are, the identity of the assassin and where and who he'll strike first. The potential victims span six countries and the chance to stop this threat is too slim and declines by the hour.

x

"Colonel Mann," Gibbs turns to the woman still looking over the low barrier, his formality reserved for the office, "how are you coming on Army converts to Islam?"

"In the past year there have been seven, total of twenty declared in the past two. I've got my people working on them."

"Any of them able to lay hands on seven million dollars?"

"You'd be surprised. When some strongholds fell a considerable amount of currency and other valuables were uncovered. Everything of value is supposed to be turned over to, be accounted for and preserved by the proper authorities. In a war zone, we depend upon the soldiers for an accurate accounting of the valuables recovered."

"Riiight. And how many of those converts...? Never mind." It's naïve to assume that those who recovered said loot are the ones backing this plot. All together, there could be vast numbers of potential suspects, everybody anyone in the Mid-East could encounter.

"Gibbs - Gibbs - Gibbs - _Gibbs __- __Gibbs_!" Abby's voice yells through the deactivated plasma screen loudly enough to make the men on either side jump, DiNozzo literally off the edge of his seat. He catches himself barely in time, arms flailing along his desktop, to prevent himself from tumbling to the floor.

"I am going to find that program she uses," DiNozzo burns, "and I'm going to–" McGee uses the remote control and Abby looks up at them into the ceiling-mounted security camera in her lab.

"Sorry about that, Tony."

"If you were, you wouldn't do it."

"But I have to. I've ID'd your suspect."

xx

Six people crowd into the Forensics Lab to confront the enthused woman who greets them with an empty white and red plastic container. "Gibbs, where's my 'Caf-Pow!'?"

"Later."

"But I–"

"I'll bring you a bucket of it," DiNozzo declares, "if you never make me wet my pants again."

"I'll stop taking over the plasma, Tony, but the pants wetting is up to you."

"_The __ID_." Gibbs demands.

"Oh," she turns to her AIFIS computer, "right here. I pulled prints off the hit list, found the Iceman's who we already knew and two others."

Two side by side images appear on the screen. The left one is a Booking Photo taken before a measurement chart, the white on black placard he holds before him shows the image of Arthur Gobrowski is five years old. "Most recent one available in the system, I'm afraid," Abby says of six foot two, brown haired Caucasian man. "Gobrowski was tried for involuntary manslaughter, got four years, all they'll give, but on Appeal managed to knock it down to two."

"I'm more interested in the other one," Hollis Mann declares, pushing aside the injustice as she indicates Army Second Lieutenant Arnold Gottmann.

"Gobrowski and Gottmann," DiNozzo says, "sounds like a Law Firm." But he sees in Gibbs' glare that he finds nothing funny about it.

"Kind of ironic if he's the contractor," Abby says.

"How so?"

"Come on, Gibbs, Gottmann - man of God? And he's putting out contracts on..." His intensity makes her turn back to the computer, head down, muttering "Well at least I found it ironic."

"What've you got?"

"Arthur Gobrowski has such a long and violent record I'm amazed they went for involuntary with its four year limit, and I'd like to slap the defense lawyer. The manslaughter charge was against his own cousin, but from what I found there were too many bits of evidence thrown out.

"Gottmann, on the other hand, doesn't have much of a record at all, nothing nearly as serious as Gobrowski's most pizda charge."

"Pizda?"

"McGee gave me a Word-a-Day calendar for my birthday."

"What language?"

"Never mind, DiNozzo," Gibbs cuts this next round of pizda short, more concerned with the facts about their suspects. Chief on his list is "What makes them suspects?"

"I'm not sure how they fit together, but they both handled that hit list."

"That all you've got?"

"Oh ye of little faith!" But then she looks around the lab, no other device has rendered its answers yet. "That's all I've got." Gibbs starts out of the lab, the other in his wake. "Gibbs, what about my 'Caf-Pow!'?"

"DiNozzo, 'Caf-Pow!" he says as he goes out the door. Tony, on his six, pauses and looks back.

"You promise you won't scare me out of my seat with the plasma screen?"

"Come on, Tony," she says with a kindly smirk, feelng she still owes him plenty for the earlier humiliation, "you know I never make promises I don't intend to keep."

xxx

"I found the link between Gobrowski and Gottmann," Tim McGee announces 48 minutes later, now long after the window overlooking the Navy Yard to the Capital Mall has gone dark.

"How?" Thus far finding the link between Gottmann, an 18 year Army officer and Gobrowski, a repeat violent offender, has been neither easy nor relaxing. As multiple Agencies, not to mention his own director, pressure Gibbs for new information he doesn't have, his temper grows shorter as the unproductive hours grow longer. He gets up, approaches the man expectantly.

"I did a Boolean search." McGee stops there as though this told his boss, standing almost above him, all he needed.

"You're going to feel my bootlean up your ass if you don't get to the point."

But the threat is undermined by a chortle from behind, from Mann seated beside Gibbs desk. "Nice one," she snickers. "Have to remember that - if I ever have a chance to use it."

But her intent to reduce the tension is accomplished, and it gives McGee the chance to answer. "I searched Arthur Gobrowski's Internet accounts for references to our targets, by name or title, in any combinations of two or more."

"You can do that?" Mann asks, her tone sharpened to a cautioning edge. She's been beside Gibbs all afternoon and evening, not once have the words 'search warrant' passed his lips.

"No, he can't," Gibbs answers and turns to McGee. "What've you got?"

"I thought so," Mann wishes she were in such a position in CID as NCIS seems to enjoy - or at least regularly employ. With the number of people who have oversight over her operations, she can't have the luxury of skirting the rules.

"Rule 42," Gibbs counters. "'Get the job done, sweat the paperwork later'."

"You usually have _me _sweating that paperwork," Michelle bites.

"Knew I brought you down here for something."

She bites back the aggravation. Warrants are usually an afterthought at best, though she tries to keep on top if someone would just _tell_her they're using another shortcut. Then again, she'd be going for warrants every day.

x

Again Gibbs aims at McGee. "What'd I bring _you _here for?"

"Results of Boolean searches, and they say that Arthur Gobrowski posted almost daily rants for the past few months on the nonsense of established religions because there _is_no God, and anyone stupid enough to think otherwise, well, you get the point. It seems that while many felons discover God in jail he went the other way. Some of his arguments in favor of atheism seem inspired; my money's on crack."

"Be sure to bring a few home," DiNozzo suggests.

"What about him and Gottmann?"

"Arnold Gottmann's Active Duty Army, is presently assigned to Fort Belvoir," DiNozzo replies with a glance to Mann who stands beside Gibbs' desk and listens but interjects nothing at this point. "It'll take a bit of time to find the link between them."

"No, it won't," Mann declares as she takes a seat behind Gibbs' desk so she can read from the information on display on the appropriated monitor. Gibbs, unsure he should be fascinated or outraged at her usurping his territory, settles for the former and waits patiently - for him - for the woman to produce results.

Fortunately, those results are presented before his overly generous 30 seconds expire. She just raises her eyes, however, looks at him over a barely contained smirk.

x

"Do I have to say the magic word?"

"No, but it's fun trying to make you." But she doesn't push the point too far before his team. Alone she'll be merciless, but not here. She's already commandeered his desk but she won't undermine his position here any more than she'd tolerate the same on an Army base.

She surrenders the chair and comes about the desk to face him. "Second Lieutenant Arnold Gottmann originally listed his Religion on his official ID as 'Roman Catholic', but almost a year ago it changed to 'Atheist'."

"Big change."

"His file also lists his family originally included two daughters, but on May 17 of last year that number was reduced to one."

"How long a gap?"

"Five months, October 2 last. To get in deeper I need my own system."

"We'll see what we can do through MTAC," Gibbs waves his hand to her but, as they exit the bullpen for the staircase he sends his orders back. "McGee, everything on Gobrowski, find him, then you and Palmer reel him in. DiNozzo, you and Ziva on Gottmann."

"You got it, boss," DiNozzo answers for them, "ses."

On the stairs, the Supervisors have already turned away for the final flight but stop and glance back at him. Neither says anything.

x

Tim turns off his monitor to conserve power and reaches for his jacket. Michelle gathers her own equipment, glances out the huge window behind them at the dark city. "Arthur Gobrowski works at Hardbody Gym on R Street by 14th near Logan Circle."

"Maybe you can get in a quick workout while you're there, McQuater."

Tim pauses, but decides not to mention he's only put on a quarter inch of 'novelty weight'; this'll pass when Siobhan has less interest - or time - for newlywed cooking. Until then, he's not about to stop her.

"I'm just interested in getting some dinner," Michelle says, pushing her holster under her skirt's belt. "This is the second time this week Gibbs has kept us working late and Jimmy and I have to eat separately."

"We'll grab something on the way," Tim promises.

"Not the same," she quips and her smile telegraphs what their mealtime is like.

Tim doesn't want to pursue this, certainly not in DiNozzo's hearing.

xx

Within the dimly lit MTAC chamber Hollis Mann strides down the ramp toward the two technicians, ignores the crossword puzzles and magazines hastily pushed aside. 'If I had to spend uncounted shifts in here, I'd need more than crosswords.' "We need a data link with Army Personnel files through CID. I'll input the passes."

Minutes later, Gibbs and Mann review what they've learned of their Army target currently posted at Fort Belvoir, 20 miles to the south. "I agree he's a likely prospect," Hollis says, "but I don't see him putting his hands on seven million dollars."

A year ago Amy Gottmann, aged eight years, died of injuries, normally very minor, that were complicated by hypophosphatasia, a bone disease which ravaged her body. Since it was a genetic disease, there was little that the doctors could do - you can't cure every cell in the body. None of the doctors' treatments were effective in reducing more than the day-to-day symptoms. Too little is known to allow them to stave off inevitable death, this time caused by a minor childhood accident most others would brush off.

"I'll have to have Abby explain this one."

"There's nothing to explain." Somewhat more in touch with her emotions than the man beside her, she can imagine a grieving father praying for years for the life of his daughter, being told every day that the doctors are doing what they can, until the multisyllabic disease took her away in a meaningless scrape. If the disease was painful she doesn't want to know, she already knows the pain and the perceived betrayal of unanswered prayers.

Gibbs, watching her eyes, doesn't ask about her thoughts. Instead, he'll ask Ducky about Gottmann's, and why five religions are being targeted.

Or are they Gottmann's targets? He knows nothing yet about Gobrowski's motives.

Pushing out of the theater seat, he goes in search of answers.

xxx

Abby Sciuto turns away from her gas saturation unit when she hears the rapid beeps of her sliding door, but it's not Gibbs who stands in the open portal, it's Sammy Sky. Just a glance into her pale blue eyes is enough, her roommate isn't handling being assassinated well. Abby opens her arms, Sammy almost hurries across the room, hides in the hug.

For nearly a minute they say nothing, let the comforting embrace work its magic. Then Abby says "SO! What's it like making love with another woman?"

Sammy bursts out in laughter. "God, when you segue you _segue_." But when she pulls back and looks up her eyes are alight with her characteristic delight. "I'm going to buy you one for your birthday."

"It'll help me get around here. I've done roller skates, shaved minutes off my time, but then I got an AIFIS match and Major Mass Spec went off in the same instant and I nearly broke my knee."

Sammy laughs in greater delight, but advises that "A Segue is safer."

"So, you never told me; what _is _it like?"

Sammy leans back further. "I sense you really don't want to know. Stick to penises. But thank you, I was feeling totally bummed. I did an autopsy this morning, and nearly lost my breakfast until I realized I hadn't _had _breakfast," she lets go, turns away, "or lunch or dinner or anything else for that matter."

"You should eat. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day - even if it is a zillion hours too late."

"Maybe now I can. You have a way of getting the world to turn in the right direction."

"That's just the opposite of what Tony thinks."

"Don't believe him."

"Never." The man's already told her a story she doesn't want to believe, about a friend she'd never believe such things of ... but it might just be true. She'd really rather not know.

The motion sensor beeps again behind Sammy.

"Abby, what's hypophostopopia?"

x

Gibbs isn't even fully into the room, Hollis Mann is behind him but doesn't do more than nod in greeting. Derailed, she has to think for a moment. "Hypophosphatasia?"

"Yeah, that."

"_Hi, __Agent __Gibbs_," Sammy pipes in as brightly as ever, having recovered a portion of her aplomb.

"Oh, yes, hi Chicky. Don't you have someplace to be?"

"Nope. Fresh out of bodies."

He's about to throw her out, Abby can sense, though Mann seems slightly amused by the exchange and she decides she'd better cut in fast. "Hooo, nasty. Hypophosphatasia's rare, in infants about 1 in 100,000, and sometimes fatal. Those born with it generally don't live beyond ten."

"This time it's fatal," the CID Agent says. "A child died in a fall she should've walked off from."

Abby can tell from his eyes that Gibbs has already shut the apprentice ME out of his thoughts, and if she can keep things that way she can continue her conversation after the pair's gone; anything to keep from thinking of the images they've raised. "It's a metabolic bone disease. Clinical symptoms are heterogeneous, range from the rapidly fatal perinatal variant, with profound skeletal hypomineralization and respiratory compromise to a milder, progressive osteomalacia later in life."

"Abby - _English_," Gibbs says. She'd think implores but Gibbs never implores anything.

"That was English, I wouldn't hit you with Latin at this hour. Basically it's a non-specific alkaline phosphatase deficiency that impairs bone mineralization, lead to rickets or osteomalacia. It's caused by one of 200 genetic mutations.

"Bottom line, it totally messes with your bones, prevents them from hardening, leads to multiple and frequent fractures, unusual development of or misshapen bones. In severe cases, one of your wake-up calls could fracture someone's skull - or kill him."

"What's the cure?" he asks.

"Today? None."

x

He'd been afraid she'd say that. With her expressions throughout this recitation, he's not surprised. "How do you get it?"

"It's inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern. That means that _two_copies of the gene in each cell are altered. Most often, the parents each carry one copy of the altered gene but they don't show signs."

"So it took the father and mother together to pass it on."

"Major guilt trip."

To this Gibbs can say nothing. He's sorry he'd started the conversation.

xxx

McGee stops his car on R street near Logan Circle across from the Hardbody gym, which occupies the second and third floors above a space intensive People's Drug. Even at 2012 the place is still active. He and Michelle look above the blue canopyed entrance to the row of too-brightly lit plate glass windows where, at the far left, two women in sports bras and hip-hugging shorts run on side controlled treadmills as though determined to crash through the windows before them.

"Down, boy," Michelle advises with a grin, "they're only three-quarter naked women whose boobs bounce with every stride. Nothing to be interested in."

He turns to her, more annoyed by the observation than the late hour. "I wasn't–" But he catches her grin, points out that "You probably had your eyes on that guy at the right end."

Her eyes shift to the designated window. "Beefcake. I don't like beefcake, I like Swedish sausage; long and spicy."

This is more than Tim can stand, particularly after his partner's outrageous interrogation last evening at the 'Shangra-La' club. He'd left that out of his report not so much to protect her but because no one would've believed it.

"Let's get this over with. I don't know about you, but Shav and I came in together this morning, so unless she checks out a car she's pretty well stranded until I clock out."

This is enough to wipe the last of the smile off her lips. "Ditto, except _he _has the car." She yanks the door handle.

x

The entryway is air-conditioned, hardly necessary in the cool mid-April evening but Tim supposes it's a bracing preparation for a workout, or else a welcome relief before one hits the street. They ride the elevator to the second floor, ignore Cher singing 'If I could turn back time', grateful for the brevity of the ride until the doors open to the long view of the floor and they realize they'd been subjected to only a muted version of the incentive single that blares from every speaker.

The view along the left row of windows that overlook the dark city is the eight treadmills, only one, seven and eight from their perspective occupied by straining bodies, the one male and two female.

Before them, extending outward from the right wall, is a blue platform and partition combination that serves as reception / registration and membership area. Beyond it the agents can see, as they come about to the front of the reception dais, are a refrigerator that contains too large an assortment of energy drinks, a mini-store and an open entryway to the right. Behind the counter before them a tall, thoroughly built blonde greets them with a two thousand dollar smile. "Good evening. May I interest you in our two-for-one Couples' Membership?"

"Maybe if we were a couple," Michelle says, having no interest in bright-eyed Saleswomanship. The only thing similar about her and her partner are their matching black jackets and black/white caps.

x

"We're here," Tim says before the young woman, Kara by the nametag thrust out upon her breast, can start on the substitute offer, "to see Arthur Gobrowski. I understand he works here."

"Yes, he does," Kara says, her budding apprehension makes her take in the pair more closely. "Who should I say you are?"

"You shouldn't say _any_thing," Tim counters firmly, having no desire for their quarry to slip out a back door while they listen to sales pitches by the too-snugly dressed girl. "We're Federal Agents, Special Agents Palmer and McGee, Naval Criminal Investigative Service here to speak to Arthur Gobrowski."

x

Rule 11 from Michelle's list, something of a mixed metaphor that probably makes better sense to the witch, goes 'when you want to throw your weight, use Gibbs as the ventriloquist.' From her eyes turned up to his, he judges he's done it effectively.

"He's, uh, in the, uh, back, I think," Kara is evidently uncertain how to deal with Federal Agents coming after her co-worker. She looks down the length of the forward floor. "Oh, there he is now." She seems quite relieved not to be the focus of their attention and they follow her gaze to a tall man, evidently one who, by the way he fills out the gray slacks and button down shirt, makes considerable use of his equipment.

"Mister Gobrowski, Federal Agents," McGee announces as he steps away from the counter. Palmer moves further away midway to the first unoccupied treadmill and they effectively cut off this way out. "We'd like a word with you."

x

No matter how scrupulously you observe rule 15 and always work as a team, no matter how you try to follow rule 29 and anticipate every possibility, rule 39, 'however good the plan is, the first thing someone will do is muck it up', still holds dominion over all.

The two women running on the treadmills toward the dark windows are to Gobrowski's right and he reaches over and grabs the nearest by the back of her blue sports bra. He yanks the woman to him and his arm about her throat brutally silences her shriek. By the time McGee's and Palmer's Sigs are aimed past the terrified woman's head his gun, yanked from his waistband, presses hard against her temple.

The other woman, startled by the sudden violence beside her, leaps off her still-running tread and staggers into the gun line. She sees her danger, leaps against the far wall and with the exception of three still running machines, including that of the man who ducks beyond the reception counter, the room is still. Even the Romantics' 'What I like about you' is unheard, far removed from the drama.

x

"Let her go, Gobrowski," Tim commands, carefully sights past the woman's right ear. There's too little target behind the whimpering hostage's face and Tim doubts Michelle has a much better vantage. Gobrowski shoves his gun against her head, forces a scream.

"M1911 Colt .45 Automatic Pistol," Michelle whispers barely loud enough for him to hear over the loudspeaker's mindless barrage of power music, "an Army weapon."

"Wonder who got him that," Tim says sotto vocé before the pair separate another step, Michelle toward the window, Tim around the side of the reception counter.

Gobrowski lifts the woman by her neck in the crook of his massive arm, pulls her feet from the floor, her terrified whimpers strangled to a horrible gag. She pries at his arm, her face reddens as her breath is cut and Gobrowski backs away.

"Nowhere to run," McGee says but doesn't believe the claim. They're on Gobrowski's ground and through the open doorway at the end of the right wall lies the unknown. Gobrowski backs the strangling woman toward the door from whence he'd come, and the agents have no choice but to follow.

The alcove turns out to be carpeted stairs. The red faced, gagging woman hangs off the steps, too scared by the pistol that presses her head to try to resist.

"Give it _up_," Tim demands as he and Michelle aim upward from either side of the entryway, not even having the vantage they had before. They must follow step by step after the pair. "Make this easy on yourself; we only want to _talk_."

x

Gobrowski, seemingly unburdened by the woman's weight, reaches the landing of the third floor and continues to back away. The agents maintain the same distance into the free weight room, a massive space filled with challenges not usually of life-and-death. Aguilera's 'Show me how you Burlesque' tries to make itself heard; McGee wishes someone would shut off the noise so he can hear himself think of a solution.

The woman hanging from Gobrowski's arm looks ready to faint, either from strangulation or terror. The agents move several feet apart and he rams the gun barrel harder into the woman's head.

"Drop your guns," Gobrowski demands, speaking for the first time.

"Can't do that," McGee denies.

Gobrowski eases his crushing force about the woman's throat, she gasps gratefully for air that rasps through her still-pressed windpipe. He lowers the gun and the explosion nearly deafens everyone in the mirror-lined chamber.

The woman's shriek slices through the agents' souls as blood sprays upward from her right thigh, arcs high to fall several feet away. It's not pulsing, not an arterial wound, but horrible enough in the woman's panic. Immediately the hot barrel is shoved against her head, but Gobrowski's arm no longer silences her.

"Put your guns down _now_!"


	8. In Hell

Chapter Eight  
>In Hell<p>

Tim and Michelle exchange the briefest glance. The spray of blood from the woman's thigh marks the still running treadmill, spatters the window. It isn't the spurting of arterial blood but she needs help quickly. If they lower their Sigs, Gobrowski may kill all three of them. If they don't, the next bullet will spatter the brains of the helpless hostage throughout the free weight room.

"All right," Tim says, eases his grip on his Sig and prays every prayer he can remember. Five feet to his left Michelle slowly lowers her own weapon, bitter reluctance in every move.

The Monkees' television theme provides a gruesome counterpoint to the standoff.

"Drop them."

Neither will simply drop a loaded Sig, too much chance of discharge and no likelihood of hitting the proper target. They crouch slowly, cautious of sudden moves that'll cost the life of the bleeding woman, and place the guns on the carpet, hope for the chance to snatch them back.

"Cell phones, radios, everything on the floor."

"Look, you've won; you've got two valuable Federal Agents. Let her go, let her get some–" The gun shoved into her temple rips a scream even past the strangling arm.

"_NOW_!"

x

Defeated, Tim takes his cell phone from his pocket and, as he bends to put it beside the gun he glances to his partner, sees Michelle's eyes. She also complies, but her eyes show neither fear nor anything he'd expected. Her eyes are locked on Gobrowski's and she seems focused on something far from the drama.

He knows the witch is measurably psychic - he took the measurements - and whatever she may be doing, focused as she is on Gobrowski, on his eyes, he hopes it'll be enough.

"Radios too," the man demands with another jab of the gun into the terrified woman's head.

"No radio," Tim says, trying to keep Gobrowski's attention on him and away from the focused woman beside him. Whatever she's using, be it telepathy, magic or 'the Force', he needs to give her the time to do it. "I _swear_, no radio."

"Get in there." Gobrowski doesn't ease his grip about the crying woman's throat. Her wound is beyond her reach, blood pours down her leg from the bullet hole, the metal undoubtedly buried deep in her lower leg. She's pale, too much of her blood is on the weight room carpet.

x

'There', the agents see, is a large wooden door to a mahogany wood chamber set into a thin alcove in the left rear corner that leads to what's evidently locker rooms and showers. To reach the door they must actually pass Gobrowski, but he moves his hostage and himself away. Michelle moves like an automaton, 99 percent of her focus on the large man.

"_Hurry_." Another jerk of the gun, another terrified cry punctuate his command.

x

When Tim reaches and pulls open the thick wooden door that nearly blocks the thin alcove a blast of heat slaps him. The control dial set outside reads 85 degrees, but as they enter the wooden chamber he notes there's neither lock nor bolt nor anything else to break the smoothness of door or frame. As a captivity, this will be a brief one.

Gobrowski closes the door, seals them in with the heat, though the Beatles' 'I saw her standing there' follows them into the trap. "Open the door before I'm gone and I'll kill her." Gobrowski's threat is muffled by wood and Rock and Roll.

Tim is ready to shove the door aside as soon as he's sure the weight room is clear.

He turns to Michelle who's already perspiring in the trapped heat, and sees the thermometer on the wall in the chamber's rear reads 88. She shakes her head to his unvoiced question; though they can hear nothing outside their hot 'prison' they're not alone yet.

x

"NO! _DON__'__T_!" rips through the wood followed by a loud blast. McGee leaps to the door -

and bounces off it, slams to the hot wooden floor. He turns over, glares at the lockless barrier. "What the _hell_?"

"I don't know," Michelle declares, anger rips the obvious from her as she helps him to his feet.

Tim pushes the door, shoves it, turns shoulder to it and slams his body into the unyielding wood, steps back and kicks it hard enough to knock an 'ordinary' door off its hinges. Frustrated, he pounds at the door, turns and kicks backward at it.

He examines the frame, demands in tones hotter than the room "Who the hell put hinges on the _outside_of this thing?"

When he turns around, the thermometer on the rear wall makes him forget whatever he was about to say to his partner. "Oh damn."

"What?" Michelle turns to look, what she sees removes all need for an answer about their present and their future. The needle points at 93, and it's only partially around the dial.

The thermometer is calibrated to 160.

x

They remove their caps and jackets, throw them to the bench that surrounds them on three sides. "At this temperature," Tim says, opening another button on his shirt, "you're only supposed to use this thing for about ten minutes." Beyoncé's 'Halo' tries to come in with them through the wood, he wishes he could keep it out.

"I think we'll be in here a lot more than ten minutes," Michelle says as she uncuffs and rolls up her blouse sleeves, wishing someone would have mercy and switch off the incentive noise. They're already perspiring, shirt and blouse darken in irregular patterns on their bodies. Tim pulls the collar of his shirt away and back quickly, but only fans hot dry air.

"What do you feel?" he asks.

Michelle looks at him as though he's grown a third head. "_Hot_."

"No," he says, recalling their visit to Colette Zane's home when she'd pinpointed the woman's location through the walls of her building. "I mean outside."

x

Michelle closes her eyes, tries to relax, to forget about the heat and the perspiration that already drips down her face, in her blouse and skirt, tickles as it runs down her back, tries to reach out with her awareness, to feel... "There's one person," she points low near the corner of the chamber. "I feel her fear, it washes over everything else."

"She's alive?"

"For now." She stares at the corner. If she could only get out, get to the woman, she might save her as she'd saved Jimmy when _he _was shot. Perhaps if she concentrated, focused her energies... Kendra can do it from yards away, maybe she can focus her powers enough to help.

"Can you get us out of here?"

She locks eyes with him, distracted, and anger builds with the heat. "Every plan I had involves being on the _other _side of that door."

"Sorry, I figured maybe you could..." he gestures vaguely at the barrier.

"Go 'abracadabra' and open a door that I can't figure out how he locked?"

"Sorry, I–"

She holds up her hands, mentally backs away from him, her frustration and Linkin Park's 'Somewhere I belong.' "No, Tim, I'm sorry. If I had like a half hour and knew how it's locked I could maybe do something," she looks back at the thermometer, really sorry to see it close on 105, "but I can barely think." 'And I can't help that woman who's still alive _a __couple__'__a __feet __away_!'

She scrubs at her face and comes away with two wet hands that she wipes on her damp skirt.

She sits on the wooden bench that runs three sides of the room and instantly leaps up, hands to her scorched buttocks and grabs her discarded black jacket, sits on that hot shield. When she looks up at him, Tim has removed his shirt. His wet tee shirt molds to his body. He actually looks good to her with the white material plastered to his torso but "That is _so _not fair," she breathes a scorching sigh, notices they both breathe faster in the mounting heat.

She pulls at her blouse, yanks the hem free of her skirt's waistband, but it gives no help. She sighs, the explosive breath not helping either as she glances at the thermometer. 110.

"Take it off."

x

For a moment the words hang. Take the thermometer off? Then "Oh _no __way_!"

"Why suffer? You haven't got anything I haven't already seen."

A hot flare of outrage, then the memory. "Oh. Yeah. You too, or not much." When they'd been captured by enemy agents he'd actually managed to retain his pants while she'd been stripped naked and raped while he hung from chains, tortured by all sorts of implements. She can still almost see some of the not altogether healed marks light now on his reddening skin. They hadn't been prominent before, she supposes the shadow wounds will soon look worse.

But as she reluctantly reaches for her blouse buttons, she halts. "But even _look _like you're thinking about touching and I'll–"

"I remember the omelet."

Yesterday - it seems like a week ago - she'd gripped the testicles of the bartender at Shangra-La who'd thought to use her, telling Tim later that 'you can't make an omelet without squishing some eggs'.

She undoes the buttons of her blouse, peals the wet material off her shoulders and down her arms, uses the discarded material to mop her face and chest, accomplishes little more than to move the moisture about.

x

Tim can't take his eyes from his partner sitting panting on the bench, her pink bra red as it sticks to her skin and the thermometer closes on 115, and he tries to shove from his memory the day when he'd seen her naked. He'd hung from chains from a warehouse ceiling, his torso covered by cuts and burns when she'd broken in, fooled by a doppelganger to become a one-woman rescue party. It hadn't been planned that way, nor had her defeat and gang rape, but the shared tortures of that day had formed an unexpected yet distinct bond between them.

Now he wonders, as he stands looking down at the seated, panting, dripping woman who can't meet his eyes, if they'll die today. Then he considers the possibility a mixed blessing as he becomes aware of the last bars of Coolio's 'Gangsta Place' invading the hot house. "I'll give you a thousand dollars if you'll turn the MP3 off."

She's too hot to spare more than half a laugh. "Way I feel, I'll probably accidently blow it up." Coolio gives way to Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Under the bridge.' "On purpose."

x

Tim peals the clinging tee shirt from his body, uses the useless dripping material on his face. It's a little better, the room is 115 but the shirt's only 114.

"Tim?" She leans forward, looking up at him now and he nearly looks further down to where her bra cups gap slightly from her, but with the look in her eyes he doesn't need her words. "I can't feel her anymore."

She looks to the bare wall across the broiling chamber, then to him and he never again wants to see what's in those brown eyes. "She's dead."

xxx

Hollis Mann drives Gibbs, DiNozzo and David to the main gate of Fort Belvoir, Virginia, 20 miles south near Mount Vernon, and when they pause at the Sentry station she displays her ID to the uniformed Sergeant. The NCIS agents display their's but the man's focus is on his superior.

"We're looking for Second Lieutenant Arnold Gottmann."

"One moment, please, Colonel." It's considerably more than a moment, but when the Sergeant returns from the booth he tells them that "There's no record of his leaving the base today."

"Seal the gates; Gottmann doesn't leave."

"Yes, Colonel." He salutes and she drives through the raised barrier.

"Wish I could get that," Gibbs says as the car accelerates.

"You can't have sentries seal the gates of the Navy Yard?"

"Sure I can, but I don't get the salute."

"It's all in the leaf."

x

Fort Belvoir is tremendous and the building that houses the Criminal Investigation Division isn't close, but they're in no hurry. Exit for their prey - who probably doesn't know he's being hunted - is blocked and Mann has already made it exceedingly clear this is a CID operation; that NCIS is only along for a visit and to assist if necessary _and __requested_.

When they pull up before the front entrance of the 75th Military Police Detachment CID building on 3rd Street, three men clad in fatigues bearing official insignia await them. Mann had called ahead so the team is briefed on their mission.

"Where is he?" Mann asks out the open window.

"Duty roster has him in the Armory."

"Figures. Okay, I don't want to spook him so Gibbs, you and your people cover the exits with Compton," she says after a glance at the tag on the man's uniform. "Fletcher, Kane and I will go in and make the arrest."

"Yes, Colonel," Gibbs says with enough irony to his voice to convey his humor, but there's nothing funny about any of this. The armory contains a vast array of weapons and ammunition and the people within are unaware of the drama about to unfold. Poorly played, this can turn into a Columbine-like incident.

xxx

Tim forces himself to stay seated leaning forward on the wooden bench - the last time he'd sat back he'd scorched his bare flesh on the wood - but though he can barely bring himself to raise his head he looks to his partner seated at his left. Michelle lays slumped back against the wooden bench back, sweat flows down her body in rivulets, runs into her now deep pink bra and the waistband of her skirt. She's limp and he wonders how badly he's lost track of time and when she'd lost consciousness without his noticing. He's so dry inside from heavily breathing the arid air he can barely stand it but if she's already passed out...

"Michelle?" he reaches out, his muscles sluggish, and when his fingertip touches her cooking arm she jumps sharply, stops convulsively as though figuratively running into a wall and turns on him, her eyes blazing.

"DAMN IT, WHAT'D YOU DO THAT FOR?"

"Do what?" He can barely form the words.

"_Touch __me_."

He recalls her threat earlier but thought it was hyperbole. There's no point in her killing him now; the room soon will. The thermometer reads 131.

"I was _trying _to reach Jimmy," she sighs, hot rage exhausted; it's too much effort and she's left only resigned. "I almost made it."

"I'm sorry."

x

She shakes her head, doesn't want to fight. If Jimmy's right in some of the things he's told her when studying his Medical School textbooks, then they don't have much time left.

"Astral projection?" McGee guesses, appears gratified by her nod. "Isn't that dangerous?" She turns to him, apparently surprised by his perception. "I've been reading."

"I'm impressed," she sighs. "Yes, I could - my body could die while I'm..."

"Then what?"

She'd shrug if it weren't too much effort. "Become a ghost, I guess. No one's ever really settled _what _happens."

"Do you think you got through?"

"Don't know," she sighs. "Jimmy's not sensitive - not _that _way - but we're close. Very close. Close enough?"

"Try again?"

She wants to, but her head drops. "I can't."

x

She's half surprised to find she still wears her skirt. Tim removed his trousers, shoes and socks before she'd tried to project; he'd almost made it difficult for her to concentrate before she'd reminded herself she doesn't think of him _that _way.

"What the hell?" she asks with a mental shrug, too hot to use the effort on a real one, grips the waistband and cautiously touches the zipper's small tab. It doesn't burn - too much. "I'll probably live another thirty seconds."

She pushes the zipper down and undoes the clasp, struggles to her feet long enough to let the material drop to puddle about her bare feet. When she sits back down on her jacket and blouse, the effort makes the sweat pour down her body all the faster.

"Nice thong," Tim quips.

She glances down, her eyes flicking for a moment to his darkening blue boxers. The thong's sheer material, now a deep wet pink, leaves everything but her shaved pubes bare. "Never _imagined _I'd strip in front of a really hot man and he'd be too wiped to take advantage of me."

Tim's smile is equally weak. The air's so arid he's drying up inside and yet must breathe like a bellows or cook. Rihanna's 'Raining Men' doesn't help. "Ironic, isn't it?"

"Make a heck of a scene for one of your books."

"Published posthumously."

She reaches for the bra clasp between her breasts and breaks the seal, pulls the material away and off her body.

"Now you're just being mean," he sighs, eyes on her bare breasts but barely able to move.

She looks at his deep blue boxers, legs pulled high into his lap, waistband lowered as far as he dares; he doesn't have much more covering than she does. "I'll match you to see who goes next."

He reaches for the material gathered at his hip but, at a thought of Siobhan, he can't do it, even if it could release enough trapped heat to grant him ten extra seconds. "You win."

"I don't wanna win."

x

Michelle forces herself to sit up; she _won__'__t_go out like a limp doll. She pushes her hands up her face, they come away dripping and the air's still so hot she's breathing like a bellows while dehydrating in the dry heat. "Tim, can I tell you something?" she whispers, barely has the strength to speak aloud.

To turn his head to her is a struggle, but he manages to sit forward to meet her as far. "You're not going to get morbid, are you?" he gasps.

"If I get morbid I'll cry and I don't have any tears." She leans closer and though his gaze flickers to her breasts he breaks contact as fast as he can, locks with her eyes as she confesses "I envy you and Siobhan. You two are so happy."

"You and Jimmy are happy," he sighs, trying not to give in to sleep. It's not real sleep; it's unconsciousness and death.

But if there's anything he's sure of in his last minutes, it's that Jimmy and Michelle love each other as much as he loves Shav. They'd gotten married at whirlwind speed and if there'd ever been a hint that they're not happy he's completely missed it.

x

"No," she sighs, apparently barely able to breathe well enough to whisper "we're not... That is, we're not communicating. And you two have a bond we don't. I'm Episcopalian like you, he's Roman. I'm Wiccan, he's... not. He doesn't want - we don't share that. And we've never sorted out church, we compromised. We... we _alternate_."

She says it as though that could be a sin. Well, maybe she feels that not sorting it out after all these months might be, but he doesn't interrupt to say there's time because there isn't any more time.

"He's got problems, I've got problems. He killed someone and isn't getting better, I was gang raped and I can't talk about it to him..." she glances down and blushes, "and I'm sitting here 99 percent naked with my partner and I've been asked by your wife to start 'Couples Therapy' with her and I've been trying to get out of it and now they're going to find our bodies and Jimmy will never know how I really _feel _and..."

"How do you feel?" He has to force the words out through dry throat and mouth in a scorching sigh.

x

"I love him," she sighs, but has to keep gasping for hot air, her chest heaving too distractingly for him. "I mean I really, _really _love him. I love him so much and so deeply I've never learned the words to say how much I love him."

Tim reaches for his discarded trousers at his right side but it's so difficult. The material feels normal, but it only means his body is the same temperature as the pants are. A glance at the thermometer shows that's 141 degrees. He fights sluggish muscles, finds the folding knife, pulls it out and turns, holds the scalding metal out to her. "Rule nine."

She shakes her head. "I've got my own," she breathes. "I'm a good NCIS agent." She bends over, reaches for her fallen skirt and the leather holder on her waistband belt but the touch of his scalding hand on her bare back stops her and she looks back.

"You are a _great _NCIS agent."

She purses her lips in a silent kiss and slowly bends again, hears Tim work on the seat in the space between them. Snagging the material, she works cautiously and feels the room spin about. She sits up as quickly as she dares, pulls the knife from its holder but the room won't stop spinning. Dizzy, sick, she scoots a few inches further from him, burns her bottom on this new piece of scotching wood. She supports herself on her extended left arm and starts to cut into the seat.

x

Though it's his idea, Tim feels lost. If this is his last note to Shav, what does he say? How? I love you? He says that so often, but does he ever say it enough - or well enough? He ignores Michelle's cuts, tries to find the words. Gemcity's the wordsmith and he's gone. Probably dead already.

It seems to take forever to slowly scratch the words into the varnished wood.

_Shav, __I __love __you __forever. __I__'__ll __be __waiting __in __Heav_

"Tim?" Michelle gasps and he looks up. Her bare back's to him but it heaves with her heavy breaths, her voice tiny. "I'm... I can't... The room's... I... I feel like I'm... going to..." Before he can move her arm gives way, she falls forward, topples off the bench and crashes to the wooden floor on her back. Her arms flop weakly, one out to her side, the other above her head.

"Michelle?"

She doesn't move.

x

He forces himself up, half off the bench and the room flips about in sickening gyrations. He fights it but his slick hand slips on the wood and he falls off the bench, hard upon his knees beside the woman. He barely balances himself, reaches his fingers to the pulse point below her right ear and nearly burns himself on her. The room spins and flops about but he can barely find a pulse; it's weak and fast and he...

The room flips upside down and he topples forward, falls atop her scorching body, burns himself on her flesh.

A tiny piece of his mind screams that he can't cover her, worst thing possible but also, the way he's laying, it'd look like he's...

He gets his hands to the scalding wood floor on either side of her and pushes, gets about a quarter inch off her before he gives out and collapses upon her again. He shoves, almost eases some weight of his near naked body off hers. Panting, his body seared by hers, he shoves harder, exhausts the last of his strength and the room...


	9. Kill It

Chapter Nine

Kill It

Lt. Col. Hollis Mann has her own set of professional rules, inspired by her closeness to Leroy Jethro Gibbs, and Rule One reads: 'No matter what plans I make, if Jethro's around he'll change them.'

Thus she's not surprised to learn that her orders that the NCIS agents remain as backup outside the Armory with PFC Compton don't apply to him. DiNozzo and David follow the plan, cover with Compton the three natural exits of the building. Gibbs enters side-by-side with her, with PFCs Fletcher and Kane flanking them.

She'd be angry if it were anyone other than Jethro being Jethro. She'd finished not long ago a brief meditation on respect based on venue, that she'd no more overrule him on a Navy or Marine installation than she would tolerate his doing it to her on an Army base, but the mission is too important to come off target now. She'll give him one of his own 'wake-up' calls later.

Now she'll tolerate a minor and inevitable modification to her plan; the play is still hers and the target will be taken down in the manner she prescribes. All that's needed is one final modification to the plan.

x

As she and Gibbs lead the two fatigue-clad Investigators, she projects her voice slightly, makes sure it carries an extra few yards through the huge open space and she continues her non-existent conversation with the Marine visitor.

"– is fully equipped for any military operation as well as able to provide for domestic troops in the event of civil emergency or natural disaster."

They recognize Second Lieutenant Arnold Gottmann by both photo and uniform; in the knot of six fatigue clad men, he's the only Lieutenant. Mann guides the group in his direction.

"Should our personnel be needed we have the ability to deploy, within one hour, two fully armed Divisions ready to meet any emergency situation. In the event of terrorist attack we can deploy a thousand men within two hours of receiving orders. Oh, Lieutenant." she says to Gottmann, approaching the final six feet.

"Colonel."

"This is Special Agent Gibbs from NCIS, he's here to evaluate our preparedness for emergency situations. Please instruct him on our present armament capacity."

"Of course." Gottmann turns slightly toward the extensive racks of ordinance. "We have–"

The take-down is so swift and efficient neither Gottmann nor the five men with him can react in time. Gibbs, Fletcher and Kane hold him securely face down on the cement while Mann waves the other soldiers back, draws her sidearm and places it to the back of Gottmann's head.

"This is the only weapon you need concern yourself with. Lieutenant Arnold Gottmann, you are under arrest on a charge of Conspiracy to Commit Murder and additional charges and specifications to be filed against you and of which you shall be duly informed. Under Article 31 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice you have the right..."

xx

Gibbs, DiNozzo and David are about to get into his car for the return trip to the Navy Yard when his cell phone rings with Autopsy's call code. He thumbs the device open. "What've you got, Duck?"

/Agent Gibbs, it's Jimmy–/

"What do you want, Palmer?" He can imagine reasons why the Deputy ME would phone him this late in the night and none of them are good.

/Is 'Chelle with you?/

"No."

/I can't reach her and I can feel... well, I _feel_something's wrong. For the past half hour–/

Gibbs stops listening, checks his watch; it's been over an hour since he'd sent her and McGee on the late evening pick-up. "I'll get back to you, Palmer." He keys the call cut-off and immediately presses a speed-dial code, at the same time he glances at DiNozzo. "Ring up Palmer."

Four rings, then /You've reached Timothy–/ He slaps the phone closed as DiNozzo lowers his own.

"Voice mail," he reports, picking up on Gibbs' tension.

Gibbs hits one more speed code. A husband's anxiety is one thing, two agents out of touch...

/You're on the air, late night, with the fabulous–/

"Abby: McGee and Palmer's cell GPSes. _N__ow_." He hears an immediate staccato trill of keystrokes and tosses the phone to DiNozzo as the three agents virtually leap into his car. He starts driving before all the doors are closed, hears Ziva's voice as background noise; she's not talking to him and he's picking up speed on screeching tires. He'd sent the pair to Logan Circle, he'll get details along the way.

"Thanks, Abs," DiNozzo says tersely but anxious words cut him off. "We'll find them." He closes the phone and gives Gibbs a familiar address on R Street.

"Hardbody Gym on R Street," Ziva says into her own cell phone. A moment later she breaks her connection. "I have mobilized Higgins' and Arnell's teams."

"DiNozzo, get back to Ducky; him and Palmer with full med kits." He shoves the accelerator into the floorboard and holds his hand on the horn; the sentries at the main gate can open it or replace it.

xxx

Ducky and Jimmy arrive in the ME blue and white truck in front of the second and third floor Hardbody Gym at R and 14th seconds behind Fred Higgins' and Rosa Arnell's teams, the seven agents already gathered at the locked, street level door. SA Susan Bourne, barely distinguishable for the ubiquitous black jackets and caps, crouches before the door. As the shriek of overtaxed tires announces the arrival of Gibbs' team - they'd spanned the twenty miles in under fifteen minutes, the lock yields to skillful hands.

The two stories above the People's Drug store are brightly lit even though the main entrance was sealed - but if the agents had proof that two of their own were in danger inside, rather than just having their cell phone locations, they'd have broken through the glass doors and considered restitution later.

A call is out to the owner of record, located through Abby Sciuto's research, but Bourne holds the door aside as her fellows charge through.

x

SSA Rosa Arnell's team takes the elevator to three while Gibbs' and Fred Higgins' teams charge up the stairs. As the seven break onto the unlocked second floor, the amplified notes of Blondie's 'One way or another' blast them.

"Kill that shit," Fred Higgins commands. There could be an army massing upstairs and they wouldn't hear it. SA Jefferson hurries behind the elevated enclosed counter, finds the proper control, reduces the gym to blessed silence. The agents, Sigs at ready, flood the long room past the registration desk and row of treadmills and other machines, some left running, and rapidly move through the vacant space toward the rear.

The blood spatter that marks the third of the still running treadmills and the huge window rockets the agents' distress.

"UP HERE!" echoes through the level, the men and women charge up the stairs to their right, ignore the blood on the stairs to join their three fellows.

The huge weight room is empty of the missing agents, but the blood trail spattered upon the carpet is a grim foreshadow of doom. To the far left, along a thin corridor toward the locker rooms and showers, a woman in brief workout clothes lies in a pool of blood. Ducky and Jimmy, who bring up the rear of the phalanx of agents, need only glance at the woman, her wounded and blood-covered right leg and her abdomen, to know they needn't hurry to her aid.

x

To her left stands a wooden wall and door; that door has a twenty pound metal barbell pole braced between it and the close wall. Sanders hits it, the pole falls with a loud crash and Gibbs hears DiNozzo's announcement of "a hundred sixty degrees!" as he yanks the door open. A furnace blast slams the dozen men and women.

Near the right bench Tim McGee, clad only in boxers, lays atop Michelle Palmer who, so far as they can see, wears considerably less. Both their bodies are bright red.

"'CHELLE!"

Jimmy Palmer shoves Gibbs aside to fall to his knees before the pair as the rescuers fill the sweltering chamber. He shoves at McGee but jerks his hands away, they're burned by the unconscious man's shoulder.

"We shall do this in an orderly manner," Ducky's command cuts through the knot. Such is the rarely expended power of that tone that even frantic Jimmy, consumed by panic for his wife and outrage at finding McGee on her naked body, hesitates and looks back at his mentor.

"First we get them out of this." The agents carry the scalding bodies out of the inferno. Both Tim and Michelle are dry, their skin red as lobsters. "Ms. David, Ms. Bourne, Ms. Wilson and Ms. Arnell, convey Mrs. Palmer to the Ladies showers. Dr. Palmer, _you __shall __regain __your __calm_ and _supervise_. The rest of us, this way to the men's shower. Agent Jefferson, as much water, energy drinks, whatever you can carry from the refrigerator we passed downstairs."

x

Under direction of the two doctors, both unconscious agents are bathed in converging showers of warm water, the temperature of which is gradually lowered until, concern over shock diminished, they're bathed in steady streams of cool liquid from several shower heads until they recover enough to drink, assisted by their fellows, from the collection of water and energy drink bottles raided from below.

The unhurried process takes over twenty minutes before the drenched agents, still too weak to move, are assisted to seats by their equally wet colleagues. Tim and Michelle, still in separate rooms, hold containers of vitamin water in one hand, Gatorade in the other, and several empty water bottles surround each of them.

When Gibbs is ready to ask his questions, McGee has struggled back into his tee shirt and trousers. "How do you feel?"

"Getting there." Tim takes another mouthful of vitamin water. "How's Michelle?"

"About the same as you."

"Palmer's _pissed _at you," DiNozzo announces from the door, and when Tim looks up, quite blearily, he elaborates. "We broke in, found you _naked _on top of her."

"Ohhhh. It wasn't like–"

"We know," Gibbs says, his glare at DiNozzo hotter than the trap had been. "What happened?"

"An apprehension turned into a hostage situation. Michelle said she could sense the woman was..." He doesn't want to say it. He knows his partner's psychic talents, but still wishes she could be wrong.

"Ducky says she bled out." DiNozzo's grim, doesn't want to get on how their partner might know, if that's what McGee implies. "The bullet to her leg ripped through several major blood vessels, the one to her gut didn't help."

"Damn. How the hell did he lock us in? There was no lock, no bolt, not even a knob."

"Barbell from the weight room propped against the wall," Gibbs says.

"Should've known," Tim realizes he'd have worked out the obvious if he'd been less stressed. "Same stunt Morley used on Shav at Saint Mary's."

"The others are following Gobrowski's trail."

"He'd better hope I don't catch him," McGee says.

"Why not?" Gibbs thought McGee'd want to be in the front of the line.

"Cooking to death is a bad way to die, but you know what's a worse one?"

"What?"

"Watching your partner cook to death."

xx

Jimmy and Michelle are finally alone in the locker room beside the women's shower. Ziva has returned to her team and Arnell's and Higgins' teams have deployed to the hunt for the hot house murderer. Michelle, fully clothed yet still wet, sits slumped on a long bench.

"Are you all right?" Jimmy doesn't believe she is, but he'll give her the chance to decide.

"Alive. Cold."

Jimmy doesn't want her to get sick from the rapid changes but he has a way to warm her; sitting beside her and gathering her into his arms. She lies weakly against him, not knowing she's soaking into him, and he doesn't care.

"Thank you," she whispers tiredly.

"I called Agent Gibbs. I had this feeling something was wrong, that you were in trouble."

"Thank the Goddess," she sighs. "It worked." It feels so good to be in his arms, she just wants to stay in them, to be warmed by his love all night.

"What worked?"

"I tried to reach you. I wasn't sure it worked when Tim touched me." She feels his muscles tense under her.

"Touched you _where_?"

She looks up at him, unable to believe his tone or his expression. "Oh, _Jimmy_."

"_Sorry_. We broke in and he was lying naked on top of you."

"Oh, for the Goddess' sake! We were _dying._ I tried to reach you astrally; he touched my _arm _and snapped me back."

"I'm _sorry_."

"You know what, Jimmy, I'm too sick to talk about this. I'm going to ask Agent Gibbs if he'll let me go home. Alone."

xxx

The death of an unidentified woman brings this part of the case into Metro PD's purview, and inevitable reunions with Detective Lieutenant Jeffrey Carpenter and Dr. Jordan Hampton, District Medical Examiner. Ducky's reunion with Jordan is considerably more cordial than the meeting Gibbs faces.

"What the hell is with you, LeeJay? I swear you go out of your _way_to give me work."

"Cathy giving you a hard time?"

This halts the tirade in mid-bloom. "Yeah, well, there're only so many doubles a man can do. Jackson's on vacation and we're short-handed - and every other day Nickis drops corpses in our laps."

"Just twice this week." He doesn't want to count Sciuto and Sky but Carpenter did roll on them, unnecessary though it was.

"Three. Your guy Paulson had a shooting on Longfellow."

"That was one of yours?" The early morning climax to Paulson's team's' case had been a shootout, and a butcher leaving his home for work had been in the wrong place at a very wrong time. He wound up cast as 'collateral damage' when an arrest in the burglary of a Navy Midshipman went bad. Only the perp, Grambler, and the butcher had been injured; Grambler had a wounded hand. "Who hit the butcher?"

"This time you get lucky, it was Grambler. Least this time you're not all under suspicion."

Gibbs doesn't ask how scuttlebutt over the FBI's grandstand play the other day had reached his counterpart. At this point he only wants to finish up on this scene, wrap up until morning and get to bed.

xxx

While Gibbs, DiNozzo and David remain at the scene to search Gobrowski's records at the gym, Ducky, after turning the unidentified woman over to Jordan, invokes his transcendent authority to order McGee and Michelle Palmer to return to Headquarters in the ME truck. While they're fortunate to travel seated rather than in the condition the agents had feared to find them, Ducky won't certify them fit for duty until they've been examined.

Thus half an hour later the two very reluctant patients sit side by side on the first silver examination table while Ducky and Jimmy perform a battery of tests on them. McGee's surprised, however, by the daggers launched from Jimmy's eyes every time he glances at him.

Normally he'd ask about the cause of Palmer's anger and would try to defuse it. This time there's no need - and no hope of defusing.

He'd spent an hour stripped down to his boxers with Michelle, herself in a steadily increasing state of undress. Ultimately she'd managed to retain only a pink thong.

Bad as that was, when they'd passed out from the extreme heat and dehydration, he'd fallen on top of her - and that was the way Jimmy and the others, three whole teams, had found them.

Their captivity hadn't been erotic - any more than the time he'd seen Michelle completely naked - but how to even approach the subject to say 'nothing happened'? He doesn't even want the story to get back to Shav until he can tell it.

"How do you feel?" Ducky's voice breaks his thoughts.

He brings his hands to his head, his elbow grazes Michelle's shoulder and Jimmy's eyes flare. "I've got a monster headache," he says, trying to ignore the vortex of tension seven inches from him.

"A natural reaction, but fortunately one that will pass. And you, my dear?"

She shakes her head. "I turned it off."

"A convenient talent, that; not unlike the sacramental 'laying on of hands'," he turns to Tim, "which makes me wonder if I should expend any medication on _you_or simply send you home to your wife."

"Send him home," Jimmy mutters just loudly enough to be heard, though the only response he gets is an uncomfortable look from his wife.

x

"I'm sorry," Michelle says to her partner, "I didn't think." She reaches up, lays her hand on McGee's head and closes her eyes, mostly so she can't see the look in her husband's.

A moment, then Tim can feel the pain in his head diminish, fade, within ten seconds it's gone. He turns to Michelle, she opens her eyes. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." She removes her hand from his head, tries to block out the growing fire at her left side.

"Well, Mr. McGee," Ducky says as he returns his barely used set of medical equipment to his black leather bag, "much as I'm sure you'd enjoy going home immediately, Ms. Sciuto has asked that you visit her prior to that, whereas I have to consult with my counterpart."

He steps away toward the door and Tim belatedly realizes which counterpart he'd referred to. The unidentified woman shot dead in the Hardbody Gym's upper level had been neither a Marine nor a Sailor, so she'd gone into Jordan Hampton's jurisdiction and care.

Ducky's already told them she'll 'allow Jethro and Jeffrey to contest over the recovered bullets,' his words, not hers. He's just glad to have his two patients still alive.

Tim boosts himself off the silver table to follow Ducky, not slow to realize the intent of leaving the Palmers alone. He gives his partner the most impersonal glance he can manage; a way to say 'I'm glad you're all right' without giving Jimmy any more cause for jealousy, and follows the venerable man through the sliding doors to the elevator alcove.

x

Michelle leans forward, tired more in spirit than body, and Jimmy gathers her into his arms; but though his embrace is as loving as ever, it's 7,000 miles from their usual intimacy. "You're mad at me," she says, her voice muffled in the cave of his embrace.

"I'm not mad."

The lie tastes to her like month-old milk.

"I know what it's like," he says, all emotion clamped tightly. "You had to get off the extra clothes, it was 160 in there. I know that McGee couldn't have done anything if he... I'm not mad. High temperature, below ten percent humidity..."

He lets her go, steps to the side, and she jumps when his fist slams so hard onto the silver table she imagines he could dent it. He turns to her and she's scared of his red face, his furnace eyes. "You were both _naked _and he was on _top __of __you_!"

"You think anything happened - or even _could _happen?"

"_No_. But it's not the first time he's seen you naked."

She can't believe he's throwing that in her face. "He was hanging from chains, bleeding from a hundred wounds and _pleading _with them to stop _raping _me!"

His fist trembles over the table. He wants to stop as much as he wants to hit it again. "_Again _I couldn't protect you!"

"Jimmy, you do protect me."

"_When_?"

"From the kind of danger NCIS can't protect me from. From being alone and unloved."

He opens his hand, the fury blasted from him. "I do love you."

"And I love you." She knows this problem is far from resolved - it may never _be_resolved at the rate they're going - but she can't deal with it anymore tonight. She has to distract him. "Please protect me now?"

"From what?" Autopsy is the safest place in the building.

"From your hating me."

He's dumbfounded. "I don't hate you. I was just mad - frustrated - angry I couldn't save you. _Again _you could've died and I–"

"You _did _save me. You couldn't have sensed me calling you if you didn't love me."

Emotion rips his voice to a whisper. "'Chelle, I do love you."

"Then protect me now?" She aches for him, longs for his arms around her.

"From what?" He wants to hold her, but his feelings are still too chaotic, he's afraid to touch her and longs to hold her.

She glances at the rows of coolers to her right, then back to her husband. "Zombies?"

He can't help but laugh, but when he gathers her into his arms this time it still doesn't feel right.

And growing like a weed in the back of her mind is the awareness that the 'couple's counseling' they're scheduled to begin on Sunday afternoon with Siobhan McGee has so much to accomplish.

She wishes she could be confident that it can.

xxx

"McGEE!" Abby cries, arms flung out as she hurries as fast as her high boots will let her across the lab and hugs him tightly. "I was so scared when Gibbs called to find you, and then when Ziva finally told me what happened - it must've been terrible."

"Can't… breathe," he wheezes.

"Oh, I know, when it gets that hot you just can't get enough air to fill your lungs."

"No, _now_," he gasps, slapping her arm.

"OH. Sorry." She lets him go and he drags long breaths into his lungs. "I was just so scared."

"Got that. Thanks. And I'm fine. So's Michelle." Jimmy, on the other hand, will need some recovery time.

Tim feels the room return to normal as his blood pressure drops with restored circulation. He does notice that the red stain that'd discolored her forehead is gone. He'd expected no less; once she found the formula an 'antidote' was inevitable. He hopes she's been able to help Sammy Sky as effectively. He knows there are stains on both women he'll never see, and after tonight he doesn't want to.

"You're sure you're all right?" Abby insists, as though seeing him, and getting his assurance, aren't enough.

"I'm fine." He glances at the high windows which show the bottoms of the bushes that line the sidewalk. It's way too dark and he hasn't done more than call Shav four times. She'd borrowed a car from Headquarters' lot hours ago, had gone home quite unworried and then dropped everything when she'd gotten his first call. The last call he'd made, from just outside the lab, she was already near the gate. She'll tear the building to bits looking for him if he doesn't get upstairs. "Ducky said you wanted to see me before I go."

"Oh. I did. I wanted to make sure you were all right."

"I'm fine." Now he can get upstairs, meet Shav in the parking lot and go home. Shav won't be frantic, but she'll be concerned about him and will work very hard to see he suffers no ill effects from his ordeal. He sees an excellent meal and early bedtime in his future.

"Good," Abby says, clearly not willing to let him go just yet.

'No wonder Gibbs developed the habit of just walking out', he thinks, on the lookout for a good moment.

"Because I have to say something that's been on my mind for like forever. But I have to know that you're okay first."

"Abby, I'm okay. I just want to go home. What is it?"

"Tim, I've always thought you were a great guy."

This is a surprise, but they've always shared affection, and more, and he's no longer in danger of dying. "Well, thanks. I've always thought you were swell too."

"I've loved you as a friend and a sometime boyfriend - but now I really, really, _really _have to say this."

"What?"

x

She says it with her palm, the hard slap so fast he never sees it, only feels the impact that staggers him and sets his left ear ringing loudly.

"_OW_. What'd you do _that _for?" Holding his stinging cheek, he suspects the woman's lost her senses from 'Caf-Pow!' poisoning.

Fists on her hips, she glares phaser cannons at him. "Siobhan's _pregnant _and you're a _bastard_! Couldn't you keep it in your pants for a–?"

"_Wait_." Hand to his stung cheek, he's more stunned by this than by the slap. "Shav came to you and she's _pregnant_?" 'What a way to find out.' "And so you _slap_me?"

"Siobhan didn't come to me, _Tony _came to me!"

"What? Wait. Back up a minute."

"_Doctor __Who_ couldn't back up on this. It's too _late_. What were you thinking, McGee? They _call_Gibbs a bastard but is that what you wanted for your _child_? What, Siobhan hid out in your apartment after she was assaulted and you couldn't hold it in your pants while you nursed her back to health? I never imagined you'd take advantage of a helpless woman who _trusted _you and get her _pregnant _two months before you tied the knot."

x

This is too weird a trip into the Mirror Abbyverse. "_Wait __a __minute_. Shav is _not_ _pregnant_. Not unless you did a test today I don't know about, I'm pretty darn certain she's not pregnant. Not three months, not three weeks, not even three hours."

Distress replaces fury. "But Tony–"

"What does _Tony _have to do with this?"

"He found out when he read your emails; yours and Siobhan's. The change in your lives, the baby coming in October–"

"OCTOBER? Read our emails?" She's flinched away from him, he holds up his hands, and when he lowers them the world seems to come back into focus. At least he _is_in the correct universe. "Abby, we're sitting Shav's cousin Lenore's boy Henry for two weeks in October while she and her husband Bill go on a second honeymoon in Fort Lauderdale."

x

Abby's so flustered she can think of only one thing to do; she throws her arms about McGee and kisses the cheek she'd slapped. "Oh, Tim, I'm so sorry! I mean I'm glad Siobhan's not pregnant I mean maybe she is I have no idea but at least it's not three months should we take a test to be sure there's no bun in her oven?"

He pushes her off. "No, we should _not_take a test 'to be sure'. We're sure. Between Shav's pills and my... well, my protection, there's _no _bun in _any _oven." He moves her further away, murderously grim. "But Tony's the one who's cooked."


	10. Witch Trial

Chapter Ten  
>Witch Trial<p>

At 2200, Abby pushes open her apartment door, wants nothing other than to get into her coffin and recover from the worst day of her life - recently - but she knows even before she steps into the living room that sleep is a vain hope.

Sammy Sky sits on the black couch, wrapped and almost lost in her pink fleece blanket. All that Abby can find is Sammy's head, her long blonde hair is paler than it was this afternoon but at least the red splotch is gone from the top of her head. Well before her friend had left Autopsy, Abby had solved the formula to remove the red splotches from their chests, her forehead, Sammy's stomach and scalp.

Now she says nothing, just sits down beside her pink friend, the contrast with the black couch and her white-skeleton-on-black outfit sharp.

"When I was dragged into court," Sammy says, her eyes on the turned off television to her left but Abby knows she doesn't see the black device, "I felt all alone, scared to death and accused of two murders... but this is worse."

"How so?"

x

Sammy turns to her. "When I was in court it made sense. I knew I was innocent but had to plead - or rather Kendra Little did - thank you for getting her."

"Wasn't me. She's Michelle's friend, but you're welcome... again."

"But that time made sense, even if I couldn't understand it. The pieces eventually fit together. This time they're not."

"Actually they are, such pieces as we have." Abby brings her up to the hour on the progress of the investigation; Iceman's assault with the paintball gun, the hit list of the world's religious leaders, the hunt for other assassins and the nearly fatal trap McGee and Palmer had barely escaped.

"Oh my God," is all Sammy can say. "Are they okay?"

Abby's not surprised that, with so outrageous a litany, Sammy focused on her friends. "They're fine." Actually she has no idea how Michelle is, but she has a loving husband tending to her - and probably giving her a very therapeutic physical.

"It all seems so simple down in Autopsy," Sammy says wistfully.

Despite herself, Abby bursts out laughing, only able to quell it when she sees her friend's expression. "I know it's hard, honey, but that's the life you chose. You wanted NCIS, you have to take the Duck with the Goose." She slips her hand under the enveloping blanket, her illustration of the point makes Sammy yelp.

"Yeah," she says and slaps Abby away, "it's a lot different working on the corpse than _being _one."

x

"Time for the direct question," Abby announces. "How're you holding up?"

"I'm not sure if it was better not to know, or to know how bad it really is." The world's religious leaders the targets of a madman's revenge, an innocent woman shot down just to force McGee and Palmer into a death trap...

"I always want to know."

"Poor Tim and Michelle."

"I heard," Abby makes it sound really juicy, "when the others broke into the hot box, Tim was lying on top of her - and they were both _nekked_."

"Your kidding!"

"Scout Mistress' honor," she swears, two fingers held up.

"You were never a Scout Mistress."

"Well..."

Sammy grins. "You think they _did _it?"

x

Abby stops dead. It's not fun anymore, not when she realizes how fast an empty rumor can turn into the real thing. She and Tim have just resolved the rumor of Siobhan's pregnancy and now she's about to give birth to a more hurtful rumor.

"Stop! _No_. Let me kill this _right now_! _Nothing _happened! They stripped because it was _160 degrees_ in there, but they passed out while writing 'goodbye' notes to Jimmy and Siobhan."

"Okay," Sammy says, downcast. She'd drawn back at Abby's intensity, and clearly feels suitably reprimanded.

"No, I'm sorry. I just got done getting my ears pinned back over a worse rumor."

"What rumor?"

'Has she already heard it, or am I going to spread it further?' "You ever hear a word about Siobhan being pregnant months before she and Tim got hitched?"

"_What_? A _Priest_? 'Out of wedlock'?"

"_No_. She's _not_. But it got all over NCIS before I found out the truth. If you haven't heard it, forget it. Better yet, if you _do _hear it, help kill it."

"Okay, but I'm not going back to the Navy Yard for a _long _time." But this declaration and assurance gets lost in a grin. "But you guys have the best rumors."

"Forget them. You hear anything that sounds hinky, you come to me."

"Screw that; you're the Queen of Hinky. I'm going to start calling you Quinky."

Sammy's head is still the only part of her visible in the mountain of pink fluff, but Abby hits it with a black pillow.

x

"Do you think they'll catch those guys?" Sammy asks after a few moments silence.

"Bite your lingual member!"

"Now that sounds kinky, Quinky."

"Your own fault for bringing me to Sodom and Gomorrah. And Gibbs _always _gets the bad guy."

"Always?"

Sammy's been involved in all of four NCIS cases excluding this one, but "_You _ever know him to fail?"

xxx

"DiNozzo," Gibbs snaps at 0659 as he strides into the bullpen. "Arthur Gobrowski." The bastard nearly murdered two of his agents yesterday, did kill Jennifer Neubauer, so he considers his team has had more than enough time to get answers. SSAs Higgins and Arnell's teams have spent the night in the fugitive hunt and they're about to go off extended shifts as soon as they complete their reports.

"Not a lot of progress, boss."

"You've had over 42 man hours devoted to this case last night."

"Considering Agents Arnell, Bourne and Wilson are women," Ziva observes, "I feel slightly put in."

"Put out," DiNozzo corrects absently, but sees in the two vacant desks to his right a way out from under Gibbs' searchlight. "Where are–?"

"Sent them to Fort Belvoir."

"Sure those two should be alone together after the way we found them last night?"

"There is no intimacy in nearly dying, Tony," Ziva bites from across the bullpen.

"Better together than anywhere else," Gibbs declares.

"Then while Probie and the Probette play with the Army, you've got the double D's."

Gibbs glares at him, not quite certain he likes this name for the DiNozzo / David team, particularly since this time it sounds like "You comparing me to a brassiere?"

"No, boss. Never."

"They'll work with Colonel Mann to break Gottmann." His use of the usual team split had been dictated by information received from Abby last night; better to keep the two men twenty miles apart until he can spare the time to deal with an upcoming explosion in his ranks over an excessively incredible piece of scuttlebutt.

There's no chance, however, to apply Rule 20, never get personally involved in a case, to this assignment. There's nothing more personal than slow murder, and Gibbs can't consider breaking teams with such smooth dynamics up at this point. It's best to keep the pair together where they can watch out for each other.

He won't even consider if either McGee or Palmer's spouses have a problem with this. That'll be their problem.

x

"David, any chatter on assassins?"

"No chatter my sources have identified since midnight." She's almost blinded by his glare and reaches for her phone. "I shall obtain an update."

"You do that. From here on," he drives into DiNozzo and David, "I want updates every thirty minutes and I don't want to hear 'nothing new'. We have an unknown assassin out there about to kill everyone from the Pope to the Dalai Lama unless we stop him."

"Right, boss," DiNozzo replies crisply.

xx

Fort Belvoir Army base in Virginia is twenty miles south of DC but for Tim McGee, as he enters the Army's version of Interrogation behind Lt. Col. Hollis Mann and Michelle Palmer, it might as well be two hundred. Mann is attired in severe duty uniform evocative of camouflage clothing but Michelle's black blouse and slacks present an even more formidable aspect.

The petite woman's only adornment is a silver circle and five pointed star medallion that hangs from a sliver chain, a basic Wiccan pentagram this time rather than the combined cross within the star she normally wears. It's stark against the close necked blouse and her essence seems charged with thinly capped volcanic fury. She hasn't said a word to him since they met in the parking lot, assigned to this task while just halfway in from Georgetown and Silver Spring.

Tim's tired, the combination of being awake until after two in the morning in intense conversation with Shav on their dual calamities; fiery death and cold betrayal; and now the disturbing waves from his silent partner make him long to return to the simplicities of Ireland.

Has it actually been only a month?

Shav had listened to every detail of his evening and night and had then made him promise to let her 'handle Anthony DiNozzo's revelations'. He's not happy with the promise she'd coerced from him, but he's too mad at Tony to look at any part of this mercifully.

x

Michelle keeps her anger tight in her heart where it burns rather than warms. She'd left home early this morning and without a word to her then half-dressed husband. Jimmy had spent the evening and night swinging from extreme distress over her safety to unreasoned jealousy over what her partner had seen in the sweat box and how they'd been found. She'd appreciated the love and concern, but the less pleasant responses ultimately made her want to scream at him. When Gibbs had called with this early morning assignment she snatched her jacket, taken her own car and was on the road probably before Jimmy'd left the bedroom to find her gone.

She'd ignored the phone in her purse on the seat beside her each of the six times he'd called before her rendezvous with her partner, and the seven times he'd tried before she'd gone through the Army base's main gate. As soon as she'd been sure his calls were ended, that he'd given up for the morning and would let her be, or that Ducky was keeping him busy, she'd deleted the messages.

'Maybe Siobhan is right - we do need 'couples counseling'. I'll try to endure it - if _he _will.'

x

"Special Agent Gibbs wants me to take this interrogation," Michelle announces as she, Tim and Lt. Col. Mann watch Second Lieutenant Arnold Gottmann through the one-way mirror of the dark Observation room.

She considers a moment later that perhaps the declaration was sharper than it needed to be, but she won't retract or sugar coat the tone. Gibbs tries her, Jimmy tasks her, the Chaplain is...

'Okay, Siobhan _is _right. I'll _try_.'

x

"I don't think you should do this," McGee counters. He recalls her last interrogation, an inauspicious first event indeed.

"Process of elimination." She touches the inch wide silver circled star that hangs before her breasts. "Wicca is the only religion he hasn't targeted. I can be objective."

"You're an Episcopalian and you're not objective," he counters, looking over her black on black attire. "More like the Angel of Death."

"This morning I'm invoking Justitia, sans scales and sword."

He's not sure she's sans sword; he can see it in her heart.

"If you two are going to bicker," Mann cuts in, "I'll remind you that _neither _of you have jurisdiction here and it's only because of the extremities of targets and lack of time that I allow you here at all," she glances pointedly at Michelle, "no matter _who _you are; Justitia, Maat, Isis, Themis or Dike."

"I'm impressed." Michelle regards her with renewed respect.

"Well read. But remember, you two are on my turf. The SECNAV convinced General McCann to okay this but if you two screw up you'll wish I was as sweet and understanding as Gibbs."

"Understood," Michelle assures her. McGee doesn't want to commit to this but he's overruled - on too many fronts.

x

When Michelle enters the stark Interrogation chamber and shuts the door, a thicker and heavier one than they use at NCIS, she looks Gottmann over for several seconds, very aware of five pair of eyes, both within the chamber and behind her, locked on her.

Gottmann, who still wears yesterday's fatigues, is shackled, a chain around his waist allows only four inches of play for either hand. He's perched on an uncushioned metal stool, flanked by two gargoyle-like MPs.

There's no table in the room in which Gottmann might ease the pressure of tiring muscles from so long perched on the metal stool, but there is a comfortably padded folding chair facing him from near the mirror.

Ten measured seconds of Gottmann's eyes on her, then "You don't stand up when a lady enters the room?"

He comes off the too high stool as well as shackles and stiff, tired muscles allow him.

"Better. Thank you. Be seated." She takes the more comfortable padded chair as he perches upon the stool, which is too high to brace both feet upon the floor. "You've been a bad boy," she says up to him. "Took a while for CID to find someone objective to talk to you," she says, the circled star dangling from her fingertips, "someone you and your partner haven't targeted."

She won't mention NCIS right now, let him think she's CID Black Ops. 'Sheol, he can think I'm Dark Arts for all I care.' She lets the locked eyes silence draw out; five seconds, ten, fifteen: "This is the point where you say something."

"Got nothing to say. I'm invoking my Article 31 rights."

"Oh. See, I'm sorry to hear that. I was so looking forward to talking with you. We're a lot alike, you know."

"Yeah? How?"

"You're an atheist - at least you are now. I'm a witch." Right hand casually down at her side and out of his sight, she crosses her fingers. "Neither of us espouse the mainstream God, we're both very much a minority; occasionally oppressed, constantly misunderstood. The only difference between us is that I believe in 'live and let live', not getting involved in the mistakes of Christians or any other mainstream religion, while you hire an assassin to take them all out."

"Go to hell."

"Haven't got one." Hell and the devil aren't Wiccan concepts and it's none of his business that she's half-Episcopalian.

"Article 31."

"Of course. I can't make you incriminate yourself or make you say anything that'll prejudice your case, nor can you be punished prior to trial. See, I'm a lawyer; I can quote the Articles in full in my sleep. In fact, my husband tells me I have, which pisses him off no end." She flexes her hand, it's cramping from her fingers being crossed so long.

"It's a real pity, 'cause I'd really like to know why. How'd you go from Roman Catholic to Atheist to contracting a hit on the Pope?"

"You know me," he says bitterly. "You know why I turned my back on those damned 'religions'. They never helped anyone, but I trusted and they betrayed me."

"How?"

"They let her _die_."

"Could they have helped?"

"They promised! Believe - trust - have _faith _and everything will be fine. They promised - and look what _happened_."

x

His words rip her heart. She's known the story too often, she hardly needs the details. But is her own faith in the Goddess and the Consort and a pantheon of Goddesses and Gods much different from his faith? She can see and experience the very real and visible manifestations of her faith in the magic she commands but–

_Stop_. This isn't about her, it's about him.

x

"What happened?"

"I trusted. I had faith - and Amy's _dead_. She was an innocent child, a little girl with her life barely lived and God let her die. Well, now he'll pay. Now he'll know what it feels like. They all will."

"How? How will you punish so many people?"

"Not just me. I'm not alone. You might've slowed me down, but you won't stop us."

"Who?"

"You really wanna know?"

"Yes."

"Drop the Charges."

She'd expected this, gives him a smile measured to fall somewhere between wry and ironic. "My boss is something of a horse trader; I hear he comes from a really long line." She leans forward. "I can give you things, but only quid pro quo."

x

Here's where she's inclined to cross her fingers again, but this time not for lies. Presently all the Charges the military can impose on this man involve levels of Conspiracy; he hasn't actually carried through on any of his plans, no one has died. Even the presumed seven million dollar fee supposedly offered to the Iceman and his successor is phantom cash; if it exists, NCIS and CID haven't found it or learned its source. All they have on Gottmann is that he's the spouter of Big Talk, and she's confident that, if she were his defender, she could shatter this case in any court in the city.

But tried and convicted murderer Arthur Gobrowski is still out there, probably with the money, certainly with the names of potential assassins and ready to issue a Contract to kill seven of the world's top religious leaders - some place, some day.

He's the one she wants, and not just for this conspiracy. He tried to kill her and Tim, did kill Jennifer Neubauer. She can virtually taste his blood.

x

"We know about Arthur Gobrowski. We know about the Iceman. He turned you down."

"Article 31."

"You do want to meet us halfway on a deal. We don't really have time to unravel Article 31 - or much else of the UCMJ. Just one of those religious leaders dies and a deal will be so far off the table you'll need the Hubble to find it."

"Don't you get it? I _want _them to die. That's what this is all about."

"Is this what Amy wants?"

"Keep her out of this."

"You brought her into it, I didn't."

"I said–"

"What are you going to do? What are you going to _accomplish_? The Pope dies, a lot of people mourn and weep and get _really _pissed at you and they elect a new Pope. It happened _twice _in barely as many months in 1978; from August to September there were _three _Popes. Same with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he retires not too long from now - mandatory retirement age - and another man - or maybe even a woman - takes over. The Episcopal Primate of the United States, she rules only a total of _nine _years and then they elect a new one. Provisions are in place for the others - but _everyone on that list is replaceable_. Absolutely nothing you can do will hurt any religion, not even mine. There's no such _thing _as the indispensible man – or woman."

She'd gotten carried away, she knows, by her passion - and knows she'll pay for it - but she sees a chink in Gottmann's armor.

"You can't win. You _cannot_. All you've guaranteed is that you'll piss off at least 4 billion people and you'll never show your face anywhere on this planet. You'll be buried before the others, if there's anything left of you _to _bury."

x

The chink grows bigger. She knows he's thought this through but never did think it through completely. "Your only chance - your only chance to live - is to tell us what we need to know to stop Gobrowski."

The silence seems to go on forever, but she can read growing change in his expression before he's finally forced to ask "What are you offering?"

"Immunity for Testimony."

This is where she must be cautious. She's left him with nothing but death, now she must fill the void with something as large and significant and pray to the Goddess that he recognizes his situation enough to take it.

If she fails she has more to fear than that Gibbs' break their agreement. Seven - or more - deaths can be attached to her soul, and when she stands before the Shi-Tien Yen-Wang, the ten Lords of Death - _or _the Christian God - she must answer for her failure.

x

"Okay," he finally says, not attempting to hide his frustration over his defeat.

Michelle suspects he'd known all the time, and had been unable to admit to himself, or to even see, that his plan was doomed from the first moment. "When we have Arthur Gobrowski on trial, you testify and we'll let you walk."

"What about now?"

She shrugs. "We don't have him now, or the money, or who he's going to hire."

"The money's not money, it's diamonds."

"Diamonds?" She hadn't foreseen this.

x

"Yep. A big duffle bagful, liberated from Khomeini's vacation home in Kuwait."

"Ayatollah _Ruhollah _Khomeini?"

"Yep."

She sits forward, then catches herself and leans back again, tries to hide her incredulity behind a blasé mask. "You're telling me you have a bag of diamonds 'liberated' during 'Operation: Desert Storm'? 1990?"

"91. Not me; I _wish_. Art. His father got it out of Kuwait in his duffle bag; his family's been living off it for over fifteen years."

"How?"

Gottmann shrugs. "Diamond here, diamond there. They didn't want to draw attention, just pocket change."

"Diamonds can line some damned deep pockets." She's sure that McGee, beyond the one-way mirror behind her, rapidly searches files on his Blackberry to confirm this astounding tale. "How did you hook up with him?"

"He's been a guest of Virginia, DC and Maryland for a while, but he's not all there, if you know what I mean." After last night she has an excellent idea. "When he drinks he talks, and talks big. He's got a lot of hate in him for a long time, lot more than I've got. I blame God for making Amy suffer before he stole her; she endured for eight years and no one helped her - but he blames God for _everything_. Anything that ever w nt wrong for him, he's getting revenge all at once."

"Whose idea was it to kill the Archbishop of Canterbury and all the others?"

"I got that immunity?"

Michelle pulls her blackberry from her pants pocket and turns it on, holds it up so the screen faces the mirror behind her. She brings it down to her lap; ten seconds later the screen lights up.

She meets Gottmann's eyes. "Yes."

x

"It was mine to hit the Pope, Gobrowski said I was thinking too small."

"And how did you manage to contact the Iceman?"

"The Iceman works for the Army. I was one of the ones who transported him out of the Navy Yard a coupla months back. Just like Gobrowski's father's diamonds, no one puts two and two together anymore."

Michelle's sure they will in the future. When Gibbs and the others captured Ronald Adolphus in what Jimmy had dubbed 'the Fantasy Affair', and the Army had snatched him away, those two Generals had sown the seeds of this calamity.

"The Iceman turned you down."

"He's only one of three. Wasn't easy, but I tracked down all of the Army's private contractors. Pulled in a lot of debts, but my daughter's worth more to me."

"Three 'contractors'?" If she were lucky enough to be outside instead of in here, she could lose her breakfast rather than pressing her hands to quell her churning stomach.

"Scorpion and Hannibal."

She's so sick of codenames; is that all the military uses its imagination for? "Gobrowski knows how to contact them?"

"I'm sure he already has. Man doesn't like to waste time. He was supposed to meet with one of them last evening."

"Where?"

"He works at a gym near Logan Circle."

'_SHIT_!' Michelle mentally shrieks. 'We just _missed _them!' "Their names. Where do we find them?"

Gottmann shakes his head. "Sorry, immunity only buys so much. You want any more, you've got to put something else on the table."

x

She can barely contain her outrage, so much slips through that she abandons the mask. "What more could you want?"

"The reward."

"_There is no reward_."

"There will be. First hit comes soon. I can get my satisfaction that way, even if all of them don't go down. But after that, there'll be a reward."

She's not sure how she missed the reversal, or when. The others would've caught it, she didn't. Why'd she come with so much confidence that she could do this? Damn it, an Investigator who can't interrogate doesn't belong in the field. Granted Gibbs has done over sixteen hundred, she'd failed her first one and is losing too much on her second. "_When_?"

"Soon. Probably take Scorpion or Hannibal, I'm betting Scorpion, time to set it up. We decided we'd leave that to the professionals."

"Who?" Is there time to mobilize a defense? FBI and the other US Agencies are already on High Alert, tracking chatter - but if Hollis Mann is a CID Lieutenant Colonel and she's evidently this far out of the loop as not to know about Scorpion or Hannibal, how effective can the Agencies be?

"Don't know. That's up to the pro, but if he starts local that'd be–"

"Katharine Jefferts-Schiori."

x

Michelle knows that, in the room behind her, the agents are putting this information into already existent alerts, but she needs more.

She wishes she could get out of the chair, work off her tension, but Gibbs doesn't pace in Interrogation. If he gets up, it's to intimidate and she doesn't feel intimidating. She feels scared.

"All right, you want a reward, I'll see you get it." She can virtually feel Gibbs' hand rap the back of her head, but doesn't care. This is her interrogation - until she mucks it up so badly Tim or Colonel Mann has to take over and someone dies and she's out on the street on her ass with a damned soul. "Who are Scorpion and Hannibal? Where do we find them?"

"What's your offer?"

xx

"This isn't going to do it," McGee says, wishing Gibbs was here. "_She's _supposed to be sweating _him_."

"Give her time," Mann says. "Not everyone's Gibbs. Remember your early interrogations."

McGee looks to her. "What've you heard?" She gives him a small smile and he remembers that Gibbs doesn't talk.

xx

"Eighty percent," Michelle says.

"Eighty percent of what?"

"Right this minute you have immunity plus, if a reward is established, it's yours. Talk or it'll be eighty percent and that'll keep dropping in fifths by the minute. When it's gone I'll start whittling away at the immunity, throw on one restriction after another until you're looking at life in Leavenworth.

For a time it's a staring contest but Gottmann blinks first.

"The deal was to be made at Hardbody. If it went ahead, drop of the first money is today."

"Where and when?"

"Corner of 40th NW, number 101. There's a vacant apartment on the third floor, it has a flagpole sticking out from under the living room window. Inside the room there's a flag. Fly the flag, leave the Contract information and one million in diamonds in the room. Scorpion will pick it up, then the deal's set. Scorpion will set terms for payment in advance of each hit."

xxx

Leroy Jethro Gibbs has no intention of leaving any amount of money anywhere, even if he had the diamonds from the Ares operation. He has no enemies to assassinate and if someone needs killing he won't hire someone else to do it. Rather he directs SA Lisa DuBois, in the early afternoon, to enter the designated apartment to send the contact signal.

The townhouse is a few blocks away from the home of the late Lt. Commander William Voss a.k.a. the re-sexed Amanda Reed, who Gibbs is happy not to have heard about in three years and wishes it were longer. The design of the target building is virtually the same throughout the historic neighborhood.

When DuBois finishes her adjustments to the flag, she carelessly leaves the window wide open. She leaves the four story building, looks neither right nor left but turns left, walks two blocks, turns right for another three, gets into a car's passenger seat beside Kevin Lamb and he drives down the one way street.

They will not return.

x

Across the street and fifty feet from the townhouse, SAs Kenneth Templeton and Patrick Larsen play chess at a Bistro's outdoor table. The game is already a half-hour old and Patrick is winning. Across the intersection and a few buildings down SSA Melanie Kelman sits down on a stoop, opens the largest of the 'Harry Potter' novels and hopes the bait will be taken before she reaches the last chapter.

On Brandywine St NW, three car lengths from the corner, Tony DiNozzo has been asleep behind the wheel of his car for nearly an hour. Chin on his chest, his three-quarter closed eyes watch the small screen on his lap which shows a spy camera's view of the building's front.

Tim McGee and Michelle Palmer sit at the opposite corner at another outdoor café while, on top of the building directly across from the open window, Ziva David lays prone, a rifle in her hands, alert to the ear wig hidden by her hair.

A few feet from the building entrance Leroy Jethro Gibbs, clothed in DC Water Company coveralls, assists actual maintenance people at an open manhole.

x

Fortunately for Templeton's ego as he loses his third consecutive chess game, two hours after the stakeout officially went into effect with the raising of the flag, a woman crosses the street from the far end of Brandywine and heads directly to the target. She's blonde and wears over her skirt a large windbreaker that could obscure an arsenal.

"Stay loose, everyone," Gibbs sends his caution through the microphone under his coveralls to seven earwigs. "Let's see where she goes."

Ziva steadies her rifle on the ledge before her, takes aim at the open window.

x

The envelope containing the supposed payment had been left on the windowsill near the signal flag so, when the blonde woman's shadow approaches the window, seven agents rush in to spring the trap. By the time the woman is close enough to the window to see the street, several agents have entered the building. The others are not yet in sight.

Ziva fires.


	11. Sting the Scorpion

Chapter Eleven  
>Sting the Scorpion<p>

Gibbs' and Kelman's teams, staking out the townhouse where Scorpion, a to-now-unidentified assassin, has come to pick up the first payment for a contracted series of hits, rush the building. Ziva, sniping from the roof of the townhouse across the street, fires her rifle.

The agents that assault the site singly and in pairs hear Ziva's words through their earpieces before the first of them reaches the second floor. /Target down. Repeat, target down./

x

Gibbs had assembled his eight agent force in the event that he didn't hear those welcome words. If he hadn't, they'd have to face an assassin protected from Ziva's attack and already alerted to betrayal by the envelope that contains zirconiums, barely passable imitations of the precious diamonds.

Fortunately, with Ziva's pronouncement, the men and women don't have to storm the apartment with Sigs drawn. Rather, they enter to find their quarry crumpled upon the bare floor, a dart protruding from her chest.

Gibbs neither understands nor cares about the particulars of the dart's contents. A vengeful Abby, knowing she can't hit back against the Iceman, nonetheless told him this formula will immobilize target number two in under ten seconds, keep her conscious yet paralyzed for no less than fifteen minutes and that's all he needs.

When the agents surround her the woman's eyes are open, but she can't stop Templeton from unzipping her jacket or Gibbs latching a handcuff bracelet to her left wrist. Templeton pulls a Glock 18C full automatic pistol from the woman's holster and drops it into the plastic evidence bag McGee holds at ready. The switch in the rear is down, it's already set for full auto, could have taken any of them out in under a second if she weren't incapacitated. DiNozzo and Kelman turn the woman over so Gibbs can finish with the cuffs. By the time she's secured Ziva has joined them.

The woman's eyes, as she's laid back, scream her frustration but Gibbs just rises to tower over her. He won't use any names but addresses Kelman, Palmer and David. "Search her. _Thoroughly_."

"Remember," Ziva cautions the others, "the Iceman put me out last year with electrodes shot from his belt."

"I'll give her an internal up to her _ovaries _if I'm not satisfied." Michelle's vengeful declaration surprises all her partners. Gibbs considers pulling her but decides to allow the witch's threat to convince their prisoner of their seriousness.

x

As the men stand off some feet away the women conduct an intense inspection. Though they don't resort to Palmer's option, they remove a garrote from within the woman's bra, a handcuff key from a slot under her wristwatch, a covered needle attached to a plastic ampoule of blue liquid pulled from her panties, a set of Chinese throwing stars from a pouch on her upper right thigh, a small derringer pistol from her jacket pocket, a six inch razor sharp switchblade from a wrist sheath, a 25K volt Taser taped to the small of her back, a Berretta from a left thigh holster under her skirt and, most impressive, a fourteen inch double edged sword in a nylon sheath strapped to her back, the grip hidden under her hair.

By the time the agents' meticulous search is complete and they restore the walking arsenal's clothes so the men may return, the nerve inhibitor has metabolized enough for the raging woman to speak upward to her towering captors, her slurred words barely intelligible. "Who are you?"

It's only with effort that five men and three women can interpret her words.

x

Gibbs doesn't intend for her to know. He's still in his DC Water coveralls and none of the others wear their distinguishing black field uniforms. "You're Scorpion."

"You know," she slurs, barely intelligible, "I am."

Gibbs doubts the woman would use the moniker 'Hannibal', the other assassin's name Gottmann had given them. Scorpions are deadly whatever their sex, yet Gibbs would confess surprise if anyone pinned him down about their target.

Scorpion nods, but the effort takes two tries.

"We don't care about you," Gibbs says. "Your contract with Gobrowski's dead, we have his money. We want him."

Gibbs watches her eyes, can read what this change does to her assurance.

"What make you think," she asks a little more clearly, "I'll give him to you?"

Gibbs nods to Ziva, who kneels beside Scorpion and presses two fingers to her throat just above the collar bone. Instantly the woman's breath seizes. Her eyes widen as she strains for breath, apprehension fills her face as she struggles to draw air.

"The drug will keep you immobile for six to seven more minutes," Gibbs tells her, "but you know you'll be dead in under four."

x

Eyes bulging, Scorpion strains every sluggish muscle, but she can't move enough to even pull aside. Even if she were able to move at will, she's cuffed and surrounded by eight unknown colleagues.

"Three minutes," the woman, evidently an Israeli by her accent, counts.

She's obviously here about two of the targets on the list, Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger. Whatever the motives of the other seven are, this isn't worth seven million.

Scorpion nods as far as she can, her still working eyes tell the rest.

xx

Armed with their quarry's location, Gibbs uncuffs Scorpion and the agents depart with her store of weapons. There's nothing they can hold her on, but facial recognition from the images McGee captured will ultimately identify her and an analysis of her arsenel will very likely disclose a boatload of information on past crimes. Furthermore, Ducky can undoubtedly formulate a detailed psychological profile useful for the future. The next time NCIS encounters Scorpion, they'll know their enemy.

As the agents descend the stairs, DiNozzo can't help but announce to Templeton "I never expected Scorpion to be a woman."

"Why not, DiNozzo," Melanie Kelman asks.

"Do you not yet know," Ziva cuts in, walking between the men on the steps, "that the female is the deadliest sex?"

"Amen," Michelle says as she also cuts between the slower moving men.

"What was that with you - 'I'll give her an internal up to her _ovaries _if I'm not satisfied'?"

"Don't go there, Tony," Tim advises. "I recently found out how she makes an omelet."

Michelle just looks back up to her partner, gives him a smile Tony can only think of as chilling.

x

"More important," Gibbs reminds them as he pushes open the townhouse door, "is how we take out Gobrowski."

"We're available for that," Kelman tells him as they exit into the mid-afternoon. She sounds like she'll love 'taking out' the man who would put out a Contract on the Pope.

"Get in line," Michelle instructs her, turns off the steps back to the car she and Tim had taken in. Melanie hesitates half a second, taken aback by the agent's tone.

"Kelman, take your team to within a quarter mile north of Gobrowski's location," Gibbs orders. "DiNozzo you, McGee and David, same distance south and await orders. Palmer, you're with me."

Michelle had advanced nearly eight feet in front of the others but halts, more at Gibbs tone than his words. It takes two full seconds for her to turn. "Yes, sir."

xx

When the other two cars have departed from Wisconsin Avenue NW Gibbs, hands on the wheel, doesn't look at the petite woman beside him. "Which is it, Palmer?"

Michelle, during the very silent walk to the car, had expected everything from a tongue lashing to the breaking of their understanding, so Gibbs' tone catches her short. "Which is what, sir?"

"Do I drive to meet the others, or do I drive you home?"

"Sir?" Fear she hadn't felt in months wells up in her.

"Rule 20. You're emotionally involved in this case. I'd whack you and take my chances with SECNAV but I don't think that'd do it."

Months ago, while she'd been on Protection Detail with Abby, Michelle Lee had confronted him, declared with impressive force that if he hit her in the back of her head again she would bring charges against him that'd reach through NCIS Human Resources all the way to the Secretary of the Navy. Rather than being intimidated by the public confrontation, he'd told her he'd waited for months for her to develop a backbone.

Much to DiNozzo's consternation - and his frustration at being unable to learn the cause of her immunity to back-of-the-head awakenings - that standing up to him had led to a new definition of their relationship. He'd never been concerned about her pressing charges, though he willingly allowed her to believe she'd scored a victory. Her immunity came solely from having the huevos to stand up to him and demand her due - something he wishes the others would finally do. That would earn them immunity - if only they'd do it.

Yet in the choice between keep his word and let her get herself killed in another hot-headed confrontation, this time with an armed murderer who'd failed to kill her yesterday, he'd sooner lose her as an agent than to bear her coffin.

x

"I owe him," she growls.

"Nothing."

She turns to him, outraged. "_What_?"

"He tried to kill you and McGee. He failed. Get over it."

"_Get over it_?"

"Rule 20."

She sighs, as frustrated as angry at his repeat. "'Never get personally involved with a case'."

"What are you going to do when we catch him? You going to put your Sig to his head and blow his brains onto the floor?"

"No."

"Then what're you going to do?" She can't answer. "_**NOW**_!"

"I DON'T _KNOW_!" she screams, slamming her fists onto her knees.

"Go in with that temper," he tells her, "and you're going to kill somebody. Maybe Gobrowski, maybe your partner, maybe a mother with a baby passing by 'cause you're so pissed you miss." Horror batters her fury. "That's why 20's there."

It's several more seconds before she can say "You think I could?"

"You think you could."

x

It's even longer before she can digest that. It goes from a brick in her stomach to a queasy mass. "Are you going to drive me home?"

"If I do, you stay there and payroll will mail your last check. I gave you a break on one death hunt, that 'wedding present', but one's all you get. If you're to grow up, I need you to do all the tough jobs. That's why you're doing Interrogations, that's why you'll go into this and may have to choose to fire. The day'll come when I'll retire and you'll stay on. DiNozzo's ready, McGee's ready, David's ready - but I can't retire until I know _you're _ready."

x

"Sir, may I ask you a personal question?"

"Don't call me 'sir'. Ask."

"Did you ever kill someone _just _for revenge?"

After a second he starts the car. "Palmer, before I retire, I'm going to give you the answer to only one personal question." He pulls out of the space, starts down the street. "That wasn't it."


	12. Taken

Chapter Twelve  
>Taken<p>

Scorpion, thinking the teams to be Mossad agents out to protect their Grand Rabbis, had told them that Arthur Gobrowski could be found at his safe place, a warehoused apartment house in Palisades, shuttered and not to go onto the market for years to come. Calls to agents at Headquarters and Gibbs' team, together with Melanie Kelman, Ken Templeton and Patrick Larsen, have detailed diagrams of their target on their PDAs, and Gibbs and Kelman have a plan.

When the eight agents see their three story target from down the block on the opposite side, they consider it unlikely the warehoused apartment building's boarded windows will ever see daylight.

"Reminds me of 'Dracula' DeKalb's place," DiNozzo says of the psychotic murderer who'd bitten, and drank the blood of, over twenty victims and locked the women in coffins awaiting the rising of his vampire bride. None of the blood-drained women had crossed over, all had died in their wooden caskets and the agents expect no better of this target.

Ziva never wants to meet the likes of John Vincent DeKalb again, but she considers Gobrowski's long distance mechanizations worse than DeKalb's up-close-and-personal killing.

Collectively, the agents consider Gobrowski's relocating to be a stupid move.

"No heat, electricity or running water," DiNozzo notes. "Maybe we should designate this a rescue rather than a capture."

"That sauna didn't have electricity or water either," McGee counters.

"But it had plenty of heat," DiNozzo reminds them with relish only he can taste.

"Agent DiNozzo?" Michelle calls in a stage whisper.

He's provoked a response; now to milk it. "Yes, Probette?"

"Shut the _fuck _up."

Seven pairs of eyes turn to her. No one's sure who's more surprised.

x

"Everybody shut up," Gibbs commands. Not only are they headed into deadly confrontation but Jennifer Neubauer, taken hostage to buy McGee's and Palmer's obedience and then murdered after they were imprisoned, wouldn't appreciate the humor.

"David, you're hiding out, where would you choose?" He's made his choice, but knows the woman's instincts and training are as good as his and she'll verbalize it better.

"Inactivity in this building has pushed it into the background in the collective mind of neighbors. No one expects activity so I would do all I can to minimize changes. An upper level is more easily defended, so I'd pick the top floor and make only the minimum number of view holes in the wood covering the windows that I absolutely have to."

Gibbs' glance at Kelman and her team includes them in this plan. "We'll go in tight, his blind spot will be straight down. He can cover the street as a whole, but can only see his footprint straight on. Palmer, you're with Kelman and her people."

"Aye, sir." She checks her Sig, drops the magazine and then resets it, chambers a round.

"Look out," DiNozzo advises, "our little Probette's going all 'lock and load'."

"Remember," is all Gibbs will say to her. He's put her on Kelman's team to balance the numbers and to show he trusts her out of his immediate supervision, but he also reminds her that if she screws up, her only future in NCIS - if she has one at all - is back to briefs and briefcases.

x

"I remember, sir."

"I told you, don't call me 'sir'. Kelman, your team around back."

Melanie nods. "Ken, you and I on two, Pat, you and Michelle take three." They move in, everyone now knowing where to expect one another when they're inside armed with only flashlights and Sigs. The four stick close past the boarded building and down the far alley. They'll ascend the rear fire escape, uncover the windows as quietly as possible and make their way into the apartments. When they're in position Gibbs and his team will launch a frontal assault, no less decisive for its stealth. If they can catch Gobrowski unaware somewhere in the house, their victory may come with no deaths.

x

Gibbs and his team approach close to the line of ajacent townhouses, grateful for the lack of pedestrians at this late hour. Shadows are long but in the wrong direction, the street is shaded by the apartment houses opposite them. Tim and Tony ascend the steps to the the boarded main entrance, cautiously loosen and pry enough space in the boards that cover the door.

It's as they expected. The boards that cover the front door don't do so well, all have been pried loose and just hang by nails pushed back into their holes. There's no lock, only a hole and the boards hide from passersby how easy Gobrowski has arranged the site for fast and easy entry and exit.

Tony eases the door open and takes point followed by Gibbs, Ziva and then McGee who leaves the boards behind on the landing, closes the door behind them.

They wait, allow their eyes time to adjust to the dimness of the electricless building while Sigs cover hall, staircase to their left and large living room right. Light slips between the planks that cover the windows but there are still too many shadows. No one likes this, the hunters could become the hunted too quickly. It takes two minutes for Melanie Kelman's whisper to sound in their left ears. /Set./

The agents work a systematic search, back one another up in an inspection of the bare rooms. They dare not use flashlights, they'd give away their positions long before they could find their quarry. The musty air stinks, no one wants to consider how long it's been since a window has

"HOLD IT, GOBROWSKI!" Tony shouts, brings the others about to train their guns on the left door under the stair. Arthur Gobrowski fills the closet, his gun locked on Ziva. DiNozzo had seen him an instant before he could've taken out Ziva and possibly more of them. Now, with four Sigs pointed at him, he doesn't waver.

"Federal Agents," Gibbs announces. Too many shadows, virtually no daylight seeps this far into the building from between the window boards. The five are little more than shadows to each other but the five guns have their own distinctive glints.

x

Footfalls on the main stairs are loud, these descending agents have no hesitation about using their flashlights and in seconds Gobrowski is speared by four beams that shift to wider angles as the men and women spread out.

"It's over," Gibbs announces. Eight to one odds, only a fool or a psychopath would challenge this standoff, but the agents are sure the mountain that fills the closet doorway is both. "Put the gun down. It's over."

The mountain sights more precisely upon Ziva's head. Kelman, Templeton, Larsen and Palmer each direct their flashlights into Gobrowski's face, effectively blind him with the powerful beams. Ziva steps to the side, out of gun line.

"Don't do it," Gibbs warns.

Just when they're sure they'll have to fire, Gobrowski relaxes. "Okay."

"Put the gun down," Gibbs commands. Gobrowski starts to bend over, quickly levels the gun below one of the blinding beams, Templeton's.

Nine shots thunder and the mountain crashes back into the closet and down hard enough to shake the floor beneath the agents' feet.

x

"Everybody okay?" Gibbs demands and his heart slows when seven voices answer and more flashlights lance their beams through the room.

"Saw my whole life flash before my eyes, though," Templeton confesses.

"Bet that's one video you never want to see again," Larsen quips.

"That's only the parts you're in, Pat."

Ziva squeezes into the closet, her fingers seek the pulse point on the side of Gobrowski's neck. She straightens, comes back out into the converged beams and shakes her head.


	13. Epilogue

Epilogue

"Once I'm sure the threat's over," Director Jennifer Shepherd looks up from the file upon her desk to Supervisory Special Agents Gibbs and Kelman, "I'll send the 'Stand Down' to the other Agencies." She closes the folder. "They can start to spread the word to their people worldwide."

"There'll be a lot of people happy to hear that," Gibbs says. Hundreds of people, dozens of organizations, had mobilized to varying degrees. The call down may take some time.

"You're certain there was no one else?"

"Gottmann seemed to think that Scorpion had been the one contracted to replace the Iceman, but word has accidently slipped out to Lollobrigida that the Contract is void since the money, such as it is, won't be paid."

"I wonder who's accident that was."

"I wonder," Kelman says.

Gina Lollobrigida has been the only exception to Gibbs' Rule 43, 'Never answer a Reporter'. For several months she's provided excellent and accurate press for NCIS, bringing them out from under the umbrella of 'Federal Authorities', for which favor she receives word in greater detail than her colleagues, sometimes hours, occasionally minutes before general release. To date, its been a smooth relationship, even though no one in NCIS is ever going to find the alleged leak that seems to give this reporter preferential treatment.

x

"I guess we'll never really understand Gobrowski's motives," Kelman says.

"He's Jordan Hampton's client." Gibbs turns to Shepherd. "If you like, I can have Ducky ask her about the conversation."

"Sometimes you frighten me, Jethro. What about the diamonds?"

"They're the Army's call. Gobrowski pere took them from Iran."

"Pere?"

"Father." He shrugs, ignores Kelman's quickly smoothed grin. "Hollis Mann gave me a 'Word-a-Day' calendar. Shame not to put it to use."

Jennifer knows how much use he'd get out of it if anyone else had gifted him with it. "Speaking of Mann, I hear she'll get her Eagles this coming month. You going to the ceremony?"

He just nods, typically unwilling to say more about this second example of atypical behavior. Though Mann will exchange her silver leaves for a full Colonel's gold eagles, Gibbs would be no more likely to attend this ceremony than he'd be to show up at the less ostentatious NCIS Awards Day - were it for anyone other than his favorite CID Investigator. Shepherd considers the likelihood for next year of asking Mann to present the awards.

"You seem unusually willing to let a case go," she observes.

"Rule 11: When the job is done, walk away."

"Metro gets Gobrowski," Kelman says with more than a touch of frustration. "CID gets Gottmann and the diamonds, and though Rosa Arnell's team is trying to track the Iceman they're not trying too hard, 'cause all we can charge him with, if we do catch him, is assault with a non-deadly weapon."

Shepherd consider the feeling behind Kelman's words. She'd assigned the Team Leader the covert job to track down Ronald Adolphus last time, to try to learn the secret behind the Army's mechanizations that would lead to their hiring a hit man. Kelman stares straight ahead; it'd been a secret assignment and her failure only leads both women to give Arnell's team long odds indeed.

"We've suffered a lot lately. Enough," Gibbs says, glances at the woman beside him, sees in her eyes her fervent agreement before telling Shepherd "I don't care who takes credit on this one; I'm just glad there's no fallout this time."

xxx

Tony DiNozzo raps on the fourth floor office door. Like most, there's nothing to distinguish this one other than the two line white-on-brown shingle mounted beside it: 'S. McGee. Chaplain.'

He hears the woman's acknowledging call and pushes open the door. "You wanted to see me, Mother?" He'd call her Siobhan but her tone over the phone had sounded impersonal and he hadn't been sure she's alone. She is.

Lately, however, he's not really sure about much at all about this woman. Lately she seems to defy his investigative skills.

"Please. Come in." She's seated before her wall-facing desk at the far end of the long room, but when he steps in she puts a small rectangular picture face down on the desk, rises and crosses the room to him.

"I need a detective's insight," she says, "and not my husband's."

"Sure." This is an interesting surprise. "What's up?"

She stands, her back to the door, her three inch high heel actually touches the wood and carpet. Those heels bring the five ten woman almost to his height, but her emerald eyes are penetrating enough to negate that last inch. "I'm trying to find an answer to something, Anthony, and I confess I simply cannot. I really hope you can enlighten me."

"Sure. If I can." What can he answer that the Probie can't, and why would she pointedly exclude her husband?

"I'm trying to work out," she says, "to understand, what I could have done to you that would make you go out of your way to hurt me this badly."

x

He can't keep his face from showing this gut hit.

"Please tell me. What did I do to you that would make you do what you've done?"

"I don't–"

"You _told _everyone about the baby. Without ever coming to Timmy or to me."

Confronted with it, he feels like she's punched him in the stomach, yet she's the one who looks hurt.

"You read our _private _emails, Timmy's and mine, and you _told _people about the baby. Why, Anthony? Why would you do that to me? Wasn't what Thomas Trovillot and those other men did enough for you?"

"I–"

"Them I can understand," she says sharply, "we women were nothing to them, but I thought _we _- that you and I - were at least friends, even if you _don't _respect me as a priest or as a woman."

"That's not true."

"Is it, Anthony? I'm your Chaplain. I'm your partner's _wife_. I thought you were our friend. I _believed _I could trust you. I never, ever gave trusting you a second thought, not even a first, I just did. You're my husband's partner, that was good enough for me - or rather _used _to be. Why, Anthony? Why would you go so far out of your way to hurt me?"

"I didn't ... think." He can't bear the tears that glint in her eyes, the pain that chokes her voice.

x

"No, Anthony, don't abuse me and then _insult _me. You might have blurted it to Ziva but it was _hours _before you told Ducky and the entire shiftbefore you told Abby. Others overheard you tell Ziva, _I _heard it from Agent Nissan in Fingerprinting. Who else did you tell?"

He feels the knife twist in his gut, it rips at him to answer. "One or two, I'm not sure." He had no idea anyone else–

"One or two. God, Anthony, you _know _I have to be so careful of my reputation, avoid situations where people would say things about me to intentionally hurt me. I guarded against them, but I never thought the attack would come from someone I _trusted_, from my husband's partner."

He can't find a thing to say.

"Why, Anthony? Please tell me what I did to you that you would hurt me so."

"I... You didn't."

"Then why? Do you – do you _hate _me? Is that it? Do you _enjoy _seeing me suffer? Would you take this to my Parish? To the whole Diocese?"

He can only shake his head. It's not enough, but he can't think of any words.

"You've shattered my reputation, my credibility as NCIS' Chaplain. I have to resign."

"_No_." He'd never imagined this. Resign? "Wait, I'll fix this. I swear I'll fix this."

"How, Anthony, when you can't even tell me to my face _why _you did it? And how can I _ever _trust you again?"

"Siobhan, I–"

"Let me show you something."

x

She leaves the door, leads him across the office to her desk, picks up the face-down photograph she'd been holding when he'd opened the door and hands it to him. "This is my cousin Lenore and her husband Bill in Connecticut." She points to the baby in Lenore's arms. "And that's little Henry, who Timmy and I will sit for in _October _while Lenore and Bill go on a two week vacation."

Staring at the photograph, Tony feels the earth open beneath him. He looks up at the woman, can see only agony.

x

"I'm not pregnant, Anthony, I never have been. And _certainly _not for two months before I'd get married." Her pain stabs his guilt, he's barely able to hold her swimming, emerald eyes. "And I wish to _God _I knew why you think so little of me as a priest and a person as to believe otherwise."

"I'm sorry."

"How can you be?" She takes the picture back from him.

"I am."

"Please leave, Anthony."

"I–"

"Anthony... Please leave."

Tony turns and, with stabbed and bleeding heart, crosses the office and pulls open the door. When it snaps shut behind him he wonders how he can set this right, all the while unable to forget those glistening tears.

Next Episode: Let Down: Jubilee Eastergaard seemed to have everything to live for, so why did she end her life so spectacularly?


End file.
